


Hitori Kakurenbo

by vailkagami



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hallucinations, Incest, Insanity, M/M, Sibling Incest, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-25
Updated: 2011-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:02:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, there is a possessed doll and an angry spirit. Then the doll gets destroyed, the spirit banished, and Sam and Dean move on. But it seems something is following them – or so Sam believes. Yet he knows just as well as Dean that that is absolutely impossible, so maybe Sam is just going crazy and all the weird noises he hears are simply the sounds of the wall in his mind falling to pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Хитори Какуренбо](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2549579) by [LaCalaveraCatrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaCalaveraCatrina/pseuds/LaCalaveraCatrina)



> Tis work was created for a big bang, and zenmyadog/no-candle-mom created an amazing video trailer for it. You can find it her her journal here.

The door won’t open.

Cursing around the strap of the bag between her teeth, Caithy throws herself at the door with more force, only to have the damn thing open without resistance and have her sprawling into the apartment face first. The shopping bag slips from her fingers and her handbag from her mouth, and when she gets back to her feet she finds herself surrounded by groceries, three rented DVDs and the sewing kit she bought especially for tonight.

Cursing once again and louder, she retrieves the key from the lock, slams the door shut and then opens it again to test the resistance, only to meet none. In the end she only rolls her eyes and walks into her bedroom to throw her handbag and keys on her bed, feeling confirmed in her decision to move out of this shitty apartment as soon as she gets her pay check from her new job and can afford something better. The damn door’s been giving her trouble for a couple of days already, and she’s decided that if even the door seems to hold a grudge against her, it’s time to leave.

Back in the entrance, she picks up her shopping bag, collects the spilled groceries inside and goes to the kitchen to put them away. Only when she places the DVDs beside the TV does she notice that one is missing.

Snorting impatiently to herself, she goes back to the door, but it isn’t there. Confused and irritated she searches the bag again, then her handbag, but the third movie stays stubbornly gone. Which isn’t possible because she’s absolutely sure that she just saw it lying on the tiles along with the other two and there’s nowhere it could have gone.

On the other hand, it would make her day worse, and that, she’s learned, is always possible.

She knows it can’t be anywhere else but the floor, her bag or the handbag, but she searches the entire kitchen anyway, and then her bedroom, before she finally gives up and decides that she must have left it in Mario’s car. She briefly considers calling him, but he’s been an ass, and the movies don’t have to be returned for a week, so there’s plenty of time for him to find the DVD himself and deliver it to her door. Preferably with flowers and an apology for having been an ass.

By the time she admits defeat to the missing DVD, midnight has come and gone. It’s time to get down to business, or she might not make it in time – sewing has never been her strong point.

Caithy feels a little silly when she tears open the stuffed doll. And a little guilty. The doll actually belongs to her younger sister, but her sister hasn’t looked at her doll collection in ages and won’t notice it’s missing for years, if ever. And if she does, she probably won’t be particularly sad it’s gone, because this one is kind of ugly.

Still, maybe Caithy should have asked. But she didn’t find a good way to express “Please give me one of your stuffed dolls so I can destroy it in a stupid ritual that’s supposed to summon ghosts.” Emma might have given her a _look_ for that, the one with the raised eyebrows, and called the mental hospital as she likes to threaten. Also, she wasn’t home when Caithy last visited her parents, so she feels excused.

Besides, it’s a Hello Kitty doll, and that seems fitting, considering the origin of the ritual.

The silence is a little unnerving. It’s well past midnight, so silence is to be expected, but Caithy never liked sitting around with only the ticking of the clock as background noise. She turns on the radio and wastes another few minutes looking for a station that comes in clearly.

While she fills the doll with the rice she bought today and sews it shut after adding a few nail clippings, she hums along to the music, all the time wondering if it will even work with this silly doll. According to the internet, the ritual only demands that that doll is vaguely humanoid, so it’ll probably work despite the gigantic cat-head. After all, it is only demanded that the doll _has_ a head, no matter what shape, arms, and legs to walk on...

With a shudder, Caithy shakes her head when she becomes aware what she’s thinking. She’s beginning to take this far too seriously. Snorting to herself, she finishes wrapping the remaining thread around the doll and ties it off.

When she emerges from her far too serious thoughts, she becomes aware of the silence that surrounds her. The radio seems to have died, and she groans, silently cursing herself for buying this cheap piece of shit that never worked well in the first place, when suddenly it comes back to life for a few brief, stuttering seconds that end in white noise. It almost gives her a heart attack and shows that it isn’t the radio that died but the reception of yet another station.

This place really is in the worst part of town when it comes to TV, radio, and phone reception, and it seems to be getting worse every day.

And the website Becca linked her to says that for the ritual the TV should be running, to show if anything freaky is going on. Caithy hopes that the randomly changing or failing channels don’t mess with that. As far as she’s concerned, something freaky is going on with her TV far too often.

A look at the clock on the wall tells her that it’s nearly three in the morning. Time to get this over with.

She carries the doll into the bathroom and fills the bathtub with water, all the time thinking that she’s going to kill Becca, Mario and Jerry if they tell her tomorrow that they had something better to do and she’s the only one who actually did this. They’d probably even laugh at her and call her superstitious, just because she keeps to an agreement when they don’t. But in case they do perform the ritual, she doesn’t want to be the only one who didn’t, because then they’d call her superstitious and a coward.

She feels like she’s trapped in a lose/lose scenario.  But as long as she goes through with this, she can still play it down tomorrow if she has to, or exaggerate if the situation calls for it.

Just one more hour, two at best, and it’ll be over.

It’s three AM, exactly. The tub is full enough, the hiding place prepared, and the doll waiting. Caithy holds it up, eyes it contemplatively, and finally says three times in a row, “Your name is Mario.”

She takes a deep breath. This is silly, but it takes courage anyway, which is kind of the point, she supposes. “Caithy is the first ‘It’,” she tells the doll that lies still and heavy in her hand. “Caithy is the first It. Caithy is the first It.”

She throws the doll into the bathtub.


	2. Chapter 1

The guy in the suit towers over her, and if Becca hadn’t already felt small and miserable, she would start now. She tries to work against that feeling by standing, but he still towers over her, broad-shouldered and well-muscled and so damn _tall_. If anything, standing before him makes her feel even smaller, but sitting right down again would make her look like an idiot on top of everything else, so she remains standing.

His gaze is stern and, so it seems to her, judging. FBI, she thinks. How the hell does this qualify as an FBI case?

“I don’t understand,” she tells him. “The police already talked to me twice. They said they were done. They know I had nothing to do with it. I was at home that night.”

“We’re not the police,” the man – Agent Black he said his name was – tells her. “And we still have some questions. So how about you start telling us what happened? You can leave out all the stuff you told the police, and jump right to the parts you left out before.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Becca insists. Her voice is shaking, but that’s because some tall, strong guy is blocking the only way out of the room, not because she’s in any way responsible for what happened to Caithy. It wasn’t her fault. (It wasn’t!)

“I think you do. So let’s sit down and you can tell me in detail what you did that night.” He sits and now she’s got an excuse to sit as well and does so. But even sitting on the couch he’s still ridiculously tall. Could tear her apart without effort if he wanted to. Becca swallows dryly; a part of her noticing against her will that he’s also ridiculously good looking.

“I was home all night. My neighbours can attest to that. They did, actually.”

“We don’t doubt that,” a new voice sounds from the doorway. Becca turns around and sees the other FBI agent enter the room, the one that arrived just after Agent Black and has been running through her apartment the whole time, looking for a murder weapon or something. He stops in the doorway instead of joining them around the coffee table, and Becca finds herself wishing the two agents would trade places. The other one isn’t quite as tall, his presence not quite as oppressing, and she thinks that with him in front of her she might be able to breathe. “But I’m sure you didn’t sit around all night staring at the wall,” he continues. “You must have done _something_. So why don’t you just describe what you did?”

“I was watching TV,” Becca tells him. She looks back to Agent Black. “Like I told the police. Around midnight I went to bed.”

“You neighbours told us they heard noises coming from your apartment long after midnight. Loud enough to wake them,” Black says.

“I forgot to turn off the TV.”

“And I guess it was the TV that turned over your bedroom table and smashed the bathroom mirror,” the other one, Agent Jones, speculates.

Becca bites her lips. “That happened later. I slipped.”

Jones sighs. “Becca, no one is accusing you of killing your friend. But you’re lying here, and not very convincingly so, which tells me you’re feeling guilty about something,” he says patiently, while Black gets off the couch and walks over to his colleague to have a look at her devastated bedroom. She can hear him whistle softly at the mess that greets him, and now they’re standing side by side Becca can see that Jones is actually even taller that Black. But he’s leaner, almost thin, and looks tired where Black seems to contain far too much destructive energy, and that lets Jones seem a lot less threatening. Becca looks at him rather than the other one when she says, “I’m not lying because I feel guilty. It’s just, no one would believe me anyway. And it has nothing to do with Caithy.”

Now Jones comes over and sits where Black sat before, leaning closer to look her in the eyes. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened, Rebecca? And then we can try to find an explanation for it.” His voice is soft, sympathetic, and now he’s right before her, she sees that he’s hardly older than her, far from the weathered aging guy she took him for on the first passing glance. Something about him seems almost fragile, Becca thinks, and that makes it easier to take her chances and open up to him.

“Well…” Now she decided to try, she doesn’t quite know how to start. “You see, there was this game I read about…”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The “game” Becca mentioned turned out a ghost summoning ritual in the end. Dean wasn’t particularly surprised when she told her story. It was obvious that _something_ had been summoned to Caithy Lansing’s apartment that night – from the way she’s been killed, and the fact that the EMF went crazy when they checked the place. In fact, the EMF went so crazy that Dean’s pretty certain that whatever came to that place never left. They’ll have to take care of that as soon as they’ve got an idea what they’re dealing with.

Interestingly enough, according to Sam the EMF also showed a reaction at Becca’s place, though it was much weaker there. And if they were to visit the other guys the young woman mentioned – and Dean fears they might have to – he’d be willing to bet that they have some supernatural activity going on as well.

“Damn children,” he groans as soon as they get back to their motel room. “I don’t get it. First they call a ghost and then they complain if the ghost actually comes and kills them. Why are people so stupid?”

“Because they didn’t actually think anything would show up. Remember, most people don’t really believe in ghosts,” Sam reminds him. He’s already slipping out of his suit jacket and tearing off his tie as if he’s afraid the thing is going to come to life and strangle him.

“Then why do it in the first place?”

“Because they hope that it might work anyway. You know, so they have something exiting to talk about. Get an adrenaline kick. But actually, they don’t _really_ want it to work. Deep down they fear it might be true, which is what causes the adrenaline kick in the first place. They are scared of what they could get into, which gives it the thrill, and they don’t really want that fear to be proven right.”

Dean blinks at him. That was the longest speech Sam has given in ages. “So, why?” he asks, because if that actually makes sense to his brother, then there really is something seriously wrong with him.

Sam shrugs. “Beats me. I guess they want something to happen, but something harmless, like flickering lights or strange noises – something that gives them a thrill for the moment but can be easily explained away later.”

“Your understanding of the human psyche amazes me.”

“I did go to college, you know. My friends came up with ideas like that every now and then.”

“Really?” Dean raises his eyebrows and pulls down the corners of his mouth. “What did you tell them?”

“Nothing. Stayed on stand-by with salt and iron.” Sam flops down on his bed and reaches for his laptop. “And made sure they had the wrong symbols and ingredients for whatever they wanted to do.”

The thought of Sam lurking around in the dark behind a friend’s house with salt and iron in his hands is at the same times amusing and sad. Amusement wins out, though, and Dean finds himself grinning at the mental image.

It helps that the mental image has also given Sam ninja gear and a bank-robber mask.

“Anyway,” Sam says, somewhat uncomfortably, as if he were reading Dean’s mind. “Becca and Caithy both performed that ritual, and in both cases it worked. I think we can assume their other friends did it as well, which means we’ll have to check on them, make sure nothing overstayed its welcome.”

It’s the same thought Dean had before. Still, he also thinks that it might be a good idea to just leave and let those idiots deal with the mess they created for themselves.

According to Becca, the four of them agreed to all perform that ritual at the same time and share their experiences the next day. The instructions demanded them to be alone when they did it, so Dean and Sam now have to deal with four summoned ghosts.

At least everyone shouldn’t have summoned more than one ghost – or so Becca told them. Unfortunately, she had of course no idea what she was talking about, playing with things she didn’t understand, so actually they could have summoned an army without realising it.

Though, if an army of ghosts had come here, the EMF probably would have exploded, and Becca wouldn’t have gotten away with a good scare.

Like Caithy hasn’t.

The college student has been found dead in her apartment the day after they had all performed the ritual, stabbed in the heart with a nail clipper. That was the injury that killed her, according to the autopsy report, and apparently it was the first injury she sustained, which was a small mercy, because after she died, the same nail clipper had been stabbed in her face and neck eighty-seven times. Even though she unwittingly brought it on herself, Dean has to admit that the poor girl kind of didn’t deserve that just for playing a silly game.

“So, do we have any idea what kind of ghost we’re dealing with?” Dean asks.

“Not really. I spoke to the neighbours and they said the lights have been behaving strangely – as you’d expect – and there have been weird noises coming out of Caithy’s apartment that night, like slamming doors and breaking glass. So I’d say poltergeist, but there has been no actual destruction inside. If it was a poltergeist, it was one that cleaned up when it left.”

“Becca also said that Caithy had complained about the radio reception getting worse,” Dean recalls. “And some other things, like stuck doors and such, all of which started in the last few days.”

Sam’s already googling away. “I’ll check the history of that building,” he announces. “If she’s been haunted for days before the ritual, _her_ ghost might not have been called by her.”

“Or her apartment just sucked,” Dean suggests, offering another possibility. “I mean, you saw that place…”

Sam shrugs. “Can’t hurt to check. By the way, did they find the doll?”

Dean stares at him. “What doll?” His brain needs a moment to make the connection to what Becca told them. “Oh, right.”

Apparently, the ritual is performed to summon a spirit into a stuffed doll which is wrapped in red thread, then release it by cutting the thread, and have it run around a little before safely sending it away again. A sip of salt water kept in the mouth is supposed to protect the living player until the spirit is gone again.

“Don’t know.” Dean shrugs. “There was nothing in the police report, but that’s hardly a surprise. Even if there was a doll, they would hardly have found it important. And if there wasn’t, there wasn’t. I mean, what do you expect? ‘A creepy doll was randomly not found?’ That’s like writing that a dragon did not happen to disturb the investigation.”

Sam doesn’t look as impressed as he ought to. He doesn’t even really look like he listened.

“Rebecca said the ritual was Japanese in origin,” he says.

“She said she _thinks_ the ritual was Japanese in origin,” Dean corrects him, because it can’t be pointed out often enough that those idiots didn’t actually know _anything_ about the ritual they were performing.

“Let’s assume, for the sake of the exercise, that it actually might be Japanese.” Sam sounds a little impatient and he might just have rolled his eyes. Dean doesn’t really care. An impatient Sam is not the type of Sam that worries him lately.

“Okay,” he gives in, getting what Sam is on about. “Call Bobby, then. He might know something about it.”

Sam’s already holding the phone. “Hey Bobby,” he says after about half a minute, which is usually the time Bobby needs to pick up when they disturb while he’s cooking or having dinner. “How are you doing?”

This time Dean rolls his eyes, though it’s with the feeling of slight satisfaction that comes with things happening exactly as he predicted them. That’s Sam, always wasting time instead of cutting straight to the case.

A slight grin appears on his brother’s face, letting Dean guess that Bobby gave one of his more charming replies.

“I see,” Sam says. “That’s, uh… great? Anyway, we’re working a case in Trenton, and it looks like the ghost we’re dealing with was summoned with a ritual that comes from Japan. Maybe you know something about it? It involves nail clippings and a doll…”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam is on the phone for a long time. Long enough for Dean to get hungry and leave to get dinner. He’s contributing to research in his own way, and proud of it.

Except that for this to contribute to research, it would have to keep the guy actually doing the research fed and running. And Sam is far too busy researching to have time for food.

Or attention. If he even notices the bag of takeout placed right under his nose, Dean will never know, because Sam never looks up from his laptop.

At least he’s not on the phone anymore.

“The burgers are fantastic,” Dean says around a mouthful, the words coming out somewhat mashed and chewed. “I got you a veggie one, because I’m an awesome brother who doesn’t  care if people think he’s a pussy for ordering this, so you’d better let me know you appreciate the sacrifice of my manly honour by eating it with delight.”

“Bobby does know about the ritual,” Sam tells him, his eyes still on the screen, though he’s no longer typing. “Not much, though, because he never had to do with it himself. It’s called Hitori Kakurenbo…” He looks up for the first time as he struggles to wrap his tongue around the syllables, almost in question, as if Dean would have any better idea how to pronounce that than he does. “Which means ‘playing hide-and-seek on your own’, basically. It’s been quite popular in Japan in recent years.”

“So how come Bobby never had to deal with it?”

Sam gives Dean his best ‘You’re An Idiot’ look. “Because Bobby hasn’t been in Japan in recent years.”

That makes sense. “Then how does he know about it at all?”

“Some of his acquaintances in Japan had to deal with it, apparently. He’s going to call them, see if they can tell us anything useful, but it’s not likely. The ghost is here and we’ll have to deal with it as we deal with any other ghost.”

“Except we don’t have a body to burn, or a motive for its actions, which makes them hard to predict,” Dean reminds his brother.

“At least it’ll be easy to find, once we found the doll. The ghost is bound to it. And the doll can’t have gotten all that far.”

“Why not?”

“Because it has very short legs.”

Dean throws his brother a long look to see if he’s making fun of him, but Sam doesn’t even blink.

“How do you know that?” Dean snorts. “You know what kind of doll she used?”

“No, but it probably wasn’t human size. Otherwise she would have needed an awful lot of thread.”

Dean can’t argue with that. But even with short legs a determined person could get anywhere. Still, it should be easier than searching for an immaterial being.

“So, we’re hunting Chucky?” he muses. “Cool.”

Sam’s lips twitch, but a second later he already ruins Dean’s fun. “Not exactly. The spirit is bound to the doll, but it isn’t _in_ the doll. Still, destroy the doll and you get rid of the ghost. In theory.”

“In theory?”

“Unless it decides to stay.”

“Great. That really helps.” Dean sighs and leans against the back of his chair heavily. “You say it’s popular in Japan, so I suppose stupid idiots without any common sense do it all the time. How do they get rid of the ghosts?”

“By ending the ritual properly.” Sam finally closes his laptop and grants Dean his full attention. “Most of the time the ghost they get is quite harmless and if they end the game in time, they don’t have too many problems.”

Ending the game in time. Dean understands that time is a very relevant factor in this. Those kids call a ghost into an inanimate object and in the end they send it away again within a certain time limit, which is important because ghosts need some time to really get attached to an object. Once they do, however…

“Do we have any idea what kind of spirit is drawn in by this ritual?” he asks.

“No, and that’s the big problem.” Sam rubs a hand over his face in a gesture Dean has seen too often lately. He looks tired, but he also looks slightly irritated with the world in a way that is entirely Sam. “It’s also one of the reasons why this is a game played only by amateurs: no professional would touch this ritual with a ten foot pole. It’s an open summoning with no way of controlling what you are getting and no guarantee that you can get rid of it again.”

“Sounds better by the minute,” Dean declares. “So we have little hope of finding out what kind of spirit we’re dealing with before we find it and it tries to kill us with a toothbrush. Fantastic.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “The good thing is, it’ll probably stay in Caithy’s apartment, at least for now. It was bound to her and she’s gone. I hope it’s satisfied now and doesn’t go right for the next victim.”

“Are you sure the ghost was only fixed on her? Depending on the nature of the summoning it could be after everyone in the building.”

“No, it was specifically her.” Sam rubs his eyes again, before getting up to get himself a glass of water. “When you perform this ritual, you put something of yourself into the doll, usually nail-clippings or hair. So the ghost knows who it belongs to.”

Thinking of the tool Caithy was killed with, Dean says, “So in her case it was nail-clippings, huh?”

According to Sam’s expression, he doesn’t find that very funny.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam’s foray into the history of the apartment building doesn’t bring up anything interesting. No violent deaths; no murders, no suicides, no family dramas that made it into the papers. It’s just an old building whose inhabitants usually have the courtesy of dying somewhere else. Of course it’s always possible that someone buried a murder victim under the foundation, but if they did, Dean and Sam aren’t going to learn about it. Of course it’s likely that the ghost was already there when Caithy invited it, but it’s just as possible that it has no relation at all to the place or person and just happened to hear the call.

“I suppose she didn’t get to wrap it up in time,” Dean speculates as they’re driving toward the house of Caithy’s other friends.

“I think she didn’t even last that long,” Sam replies. A brief glance in his direction reveals that he’s looking out of the window at the world going by with that faraway look on his face that tells Dean he’s having not all of his attention on the conversation. Pressing his lips together, Dean looks back at the street before him. At least Sam’s still talking to him. “You start the summoning at three in the morning, and the time limit is one to two hours, according to Bobby.”

“And the autopsy report says the girl died between three and four,” Dean finishes the thought. “Alright.”

For some reason Dean never quite understood, the spiritual world is most active around three AM. For Dean himself the time doesn’t really matter, since the ghosts he’s used to dealing with don’t care much for what time it is when they try to throw cupboards at him. However, many rituals work best at that time of night and he’s not surprised this one is among them. It seems to be pretty basic, which is also what makes it such an easy one for amateurs to play with.

Red thread wrapped around the doll to symbolize blood. Some DNA to create a connection to the summoner, certain phrases repeated three times. It sounds easy enough. Unfortunately, it also works.

At the beginning of the “game” the thread wrapped around the doll is cut, thus releasing the spirit that entered it. Then the player goes to their hiding place, counts to ten, and goes back to the bathtub in which the doll had been submerged, hoping it is still inside. The doll is stabbed again and turned into the searcher of the hide-and-seek game while the human goes back to hiding. When eventually they emerge from their hiding place, they are supposed to have saltwater in their mouth for protection, spit it on the doll when they find it and declare that they won, three times. After that the doll is dried and burned, and thus the spirit should be gone.

Of course, if the doll is indeed possessed and moves around, chances are that the player won’t find it in time. Or that the doll finds them first.

“Despite the popularity of this in Japan, the hunters there didn’t have to deal with it too often, it seems,” Sam says after a silence long enough to almost convince Dean his brother has spaced out on him. “Usually, the spirits who follow the call are pretty harmless.”

“So Caithy just managed to get a particularly nasty one?”

Sam nods. “Considering that the trouble she had with her apartment started days before, I suppose the one that got first in line for her was pretty powerful, and obviously not very nice.”

“And it was just waiting for a chance to get a corporal body again, even if it was an ugly doll.” Dean snorts. “Unless it was really just her place sucking ass.”

“Unless it was just that,” Sam agrees.

But of course it wasn’t just that. Dean knows without a doubt, because the universe just isn’t that nice to them. And while he tries to make light of it, he can’t fight the uneasy feeling this case is giving him. This could be a poltergeist, and a nasty one, and nasty poltergeists are nothing to be taken lightly. They’ve taken over the environment and use it against you, and salt lines and iron don’t work.

They’re nothing a hunter should take on when he’s not one hundred percent on top of his game.

Maybe they should just leave. Maybe Dean should handle this alone.

Yeah, like that suggestion would go over well. Anyway, Dean has Sam’s back. He’ll be between his brother and whatever the ghost might hurl at him.

…and once he got hurt for Sam, Sam would feel guilty again and he’d think about other things to feel guilty about because Sam can never leave well enough alone, and Dean might just as well hand him a hammer and chisel.

They’ll just have to get through with this. Dean suppresses a sigh as he watches the street before him with most of his attention on the passenger seat. This case looked so wonderfully simple when they came here…

“We should split up.”

The words come out of nowhere. Dean glances over at his brother, and for once Sam’s looking back at him, his gaze open and earnest. “Split up?” Dean asks incredulously. “For what, exactly?”

“We should get rid of the ghost at Caithy’s place as quickly as possible before it can hurt anyone else, but we also need to make sure the guests her friends invited have left, right?” Sam sounds slightly impatient, like it should be obvious. Maybe it is, but Dean really doesn’t like where this is going.

“We’re not splitting up,” he declares.

“Caithy’s apartment is on the way. You could just drop me off and pick me up on the way back.”

Dean doesn’t say anything this time, just stares at his brother. Maybe he should stare at the road instead, but apparently Sam’s IQ has dropped by an alarming degree in the last five seconds, and he really needs to watch him in case he tries to stick his head through the closed window or something.

“We’re not splitting up,” Dean repeats in his best I’m-older-and-get-to-have-the-last-word voice. “Period.”

“Just think about it!” Now Sam sounds frustrated. Great. “Dean, I’m not going to fight the ghost on my own. I just want to see if I find the doll. If I do, I’ll burn it. If I don’t, I’ll get out and wait for you.”

It sounds sensible enough. “No.”

Sam looks irritated and a little angry but underneath that is something like fear. Before, Dean wouldn’t have kept Sam from going into danger on his own if the situation demanded it, knowing his little brother was more than capable of looking out for himself.

If there is anything Sam fears, it’s becoming fully dependent on his brother. A liability.

He’s aware of what’s happening to him.

“I need you with the others,” Dean offers, because he can’t stand that look on Sam’s face, and because any moment now Sam will cover his fear up with anger and start a fight. “They might find us slightly suspicious. I need your puppy eyes to convince them of our good intentions.”

Sam just snorts, frustrated and half-angry. Half-something else.

Dean concentrates on the road.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The trip to the first guy is over quickly. The EMF shows hardly any reaction and when they ask him about the ritual, he only stares at them as if they had just peeled off their skin and revealed themselves to be green aliens intent on destroying the world. He is grieving for his girlfriend and doesn’t know why they are bothering him with this. Obviously, he did something wrong or the ritual simply didn’t work for him. Coming here was a waste of time, but Dean is glad anyway, because it spares them having to waste even more time freeing this boy of evil sprits.

The second guy is even more of a waste of time, because rather than failing the ritual, he didn’t perform it in the first place.

“I was staying at my sister’s place that night,” he tells them after inviting them into his dorm room. “She was out, so I thought I had the place to myself, but then something went wrong during her date and she came home early. You need to be alone for this, so I couldn’t… I didn’t chicken out or anything.”

“Of course not,” Dean says dryly. He leans back on the guy’s ratty couch and accepts the beer he’s offered while Sam declines his. “It’s not even real, right?”

The young man, Jerry, looks at him strangely. “Then why are you here? I thought you were something like the X-Files.”

“That’s right. I’m Mulder.” Dean grins over his beer bottle and takes a sip. Beside him, Scully is getting out the puppy eyes.

“You do believe in this stuff, don’t you?” Sam asks softly.

Jerry sets his face in a defiant grimace, fixing his gaze on Dean’s brother. “Do you?” His eyes widen. “Do you think a spirit killed Caithy Lansing?”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure it was Freddy Krueger.”

Sam kicks Dean under the table. “We’re not thinking anything at the moment. We’re merely looking into possibilities.”

“Oh God, it really _is_ true, isn’t it?” Jerry gets up and starts pacing. His gaze travels back to Sam nervously. “It really worked. And then it _killed_ her!”

Dean decides this is the right moment to leave. This guy can’t help them, and he’s a little too excitable for his taste. And a little too fixated on Sam, come to think of it.

Also, now he’s thinking about it, he’s also older than Dean would have expected from a guy living in a university dorm. Sure, there are students older than the norm, but somehow Jerry seems a little pathetic to Dean right now.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” he says, setting down the beer and standing. “We’ve got to leave. Would you mind giving us the address of your sister’s place?”

For basically the first time since they entered the room, Jerry’s gaze snaps to Dean. His eyes narrow. “What for?”

“So we can ask her to confirm you were really there when Caithy was murdered,” Sam says, standing also. “Just in case it comes up.”

It seems to placate Jerry. He gives them the information and sees them off, staying in the doorway to stare after them on their way down the stairs as if they were the ghosts that killed his friend and he was sad they were leaving already. Dean looks back at the exit and finds the man’s eyes fixed on Sam’s back. He snorts and lets the door slam behind them. “Loser,” he mutters.

Beside him, Sam rolls his eyes.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

They check the sister’s place, but she’s not home and the EMF, as expected, stays as dead as it did in Jerry’s dorm, where Dean took it out on a faked trip to the bathroom. That leaves Becca’s apartment, but even that is a job quickly done. Becca already knows something unnatural paid her a visit and seems relieved when they show up and ask her to leave for an hour.

The EMF readings are weaker this time, indicating that whatever was here has left by now, but Dean and Sam perform a general cleansing of the rooms anyway, just in case. A door once opened tends to look inviting to all kinds of things, even if the actual door itself has already been salted and burned.

They’re going to take care of Caithy’s killer-spirit tonight, after they have stocked up on rock salt and iron and hopefully heard something helpful from Bobby.

Bobby doesn’t disappoint their hope of a call, but helpful he’s not very much. His conversation with Sam is brief and leaves Sam biting his lips, deep in thought.

“What is it?” Dean asks.

“Nothing,” Sam says. “As he thought there’s no way to determine what kind of spirit was summoned. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a ghost – it could be any spirit seeking passage into this world. Now, the good thing is, the spell isn’t powerful enough to open a gate to hell or any other plane things might really want to get out of.”

“That’s something at least. So it’ll be a pretty normal spirit of whatever kind that we could meet anywhere else as well, right?”

“Right. They can still kill you.”

Dean’s aware of that. Hence him not wanting Sam to go in there alone. He throws his brother an annoyed glance. “Well, obviously, this one’s pretty malicious. Though I still think it must have been there before. Both Caithy’s friends and her neighbours told us there’s been something weird going on in her apartment for days before, remember?”

“That’s normal, actually.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “How so?”

Sam sits on the bed before him, suddenly in eager lecturing mode, and Dean feels something twist in his chest that he has gotten good at ignoring. “Her trouble started about a week in advance, right? And that’s about the time when they decided to perform this ritual. Just planning to do it sends out bright flaring invitations to anything on the sprit-plane, so they come over, waiting for a chance to get into the doll. Usually this happens only after the preparations actually started, but if it was a particularly strong spirit…”

“So we do know what kind of spirit we’re dealing with,” Dean realises. “A powerful and evil one. Fantastic.” Suddenly, a thought crosses his mind and he laughs.

This time it’s Sam’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Care to share with the class?”

“Jerry,” Dean says. “He said he wanted to do it, but there wasn’t the faintest hint of EMF activity at his place or his sister’s. Even that Mario guy had some remaining traces, even though he ultimately failed. So Jerry _did_ chicken out.”

Sam snorts. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”

“Come on! That guy’s a creeper. A creeper who likes staring at your ass.”

“Dean!”

“Seriously, he did. Hardly ever looked at me, but you’re obviously his type.”

“Is that what this is about?” Sam asks exasperated. “You’re pissed because he didn’t stare at _your_ ass instead?”

“My ass is the superior one,” Dean tells him matter-of-factly. “But I don’t really care if he has bad taste.” He puts another round into his shotgun. “So, did you dig out a fitting banishing ritual already?”


	3. Chapter 2

Sam doesn’t have one banishing ritual memorized by the time they leave for the hunt, but almost a dozen, since they don’t know which one will work, and it’s always better to remember things instead of relying on books that can be lost or destroyed at inconvenient moments. At least, that’s Sammy’s opinion. Dean’s opinion is that his brother’s brain is far too big, and contains far too many things.

It’s dark when they arrive at the apartment where Caithy Lansing played a game of hide-and-seek with a ghost and lost. It just figures. What’s better than hunting a creepy, homicidal doll in the dark? It doesn’t help that the light bulbs are all broken, which is strange enough, since otherwise the spirit caused little to no visible damage to the apartment.

It doesn’t really matter. Making light in rooms still marked with police tape is out of the question anyway.

The place lies dark and silent, only lit by the light of streetlamps two storeys below, diffused by the fog that hangs in the street. _Of course_ it’s foggy tonight. Because of the creepy doll and all…

The creepy doll that is, in the end, not that hard to find. Dean enters the living room and the first thing that comes to his attention is the stuffed doll sitting on the television screen. It’s a pale outline in the dark, something definitely not human shaped, which should make it better and somehow doesn’t. As he steps closer, Dean recognizes a face that apparently should carry the likeness of a cat. And a ribbon on the cat’s forehead. He can’t make out the colour without light, but he’s willing to bet that ribbon is pink.

Which might be the creepiest thing of all.

All the time, Dean keeps an eye on the doll and another on the room. If this is indeed a poltergeist, an attack can come from anywhere, and the obvious placement of the doll is likely to be a trap. There’s a lamp on the ceiling between them that can fall, a glass table they can be thrown into, dishes that can be thrown at them.

Behind him, Sam is tense and wary, holding his shotgun ready to fire.

Nothing happens. Dean goes over to the TV and grabs the doll without anything being thrown in their general direction. In his hand, the doll is a surprisingly heavy, lifeless thing. But something about its definitely unusual stuffing tell him that this is indeed the doll they’re looking for.

“You think that spirit moved out already?” he asks his brother.

Sam shakes his head. “It’s bound to the doll unless banished. It can’t pass on into something else on its own.”

“So it’s waiting for us to lower our guard.”

“I guess so.” Sam holds open the iron-lined box filled with salt and Dean tosses the doll inside. They stay wary on their way out, refraining from using the elevator and keeping one hand on the railing of the stairs at all times in case anything shoves them from behind. Nothing of that kind happens. A door falls shut, unexpectedly and without obvious cause, somewhere in Caithy’s apartment as they leave. It makes them start but that’s all.

They take the doll to a park nearby where Dean guards the box while Sam prepares the first of the banishing rituals. All of the rituals are rather simple in execution and don’t require much space. They could do this almost anywhere but opted not to perform them inside an apartment they weren’t familiar with and which contains too many things that can smash, stab or strangle them. The spirit is going wherever the doll goes so they still have to deal with it out here, but the spot they chose is mostly empty of stones and trees and the grass doesn’t look particularly dangerous tonight.

The critical part is the ritual itself, because they don’t know if it’ll work, and because they have to take the doll out of the box for it. Naturally, it’s then that things start to go wrong.

Dean hears the breaking of branches in the nearby trees even before he places the doll in the middle of the circle on the ground. Sam must hear them too, but he just keeps reciting the words of the ritual and throwing salt and red earth at the doll. The sounds of destruction get closer, like something gigantic walking through the park towards them. It’s very close already when Sam stops speaking.

“It’s not working,” he says.

“How do you know?” Dean holds up his shotgun, aims at nothing. “You didn’t even finish it.”

“I know it. Destroy the circle. Get out the candles.”

Sammy’s instincts are well developed in things like this. Dean doesn’t question them, just does as he is told. He places five red bee-wax candles in the points of the pentagram Sam is carving into the earth with a stick. Something unseen shakes the trees closest to them as Sam digs a shallow hole in the centre of the pentagram with his hands and empties one of the oil bottles into it.

After tossing the empty bottle away he reaches for the doll, but before he can grab it, the unseen force is over them. Dean hears something like an angry, animalistic scream and ducks instinctively. One second later Sam is lifted off his feet and flung through the air like a dry leaf. He hits the trunk of a tree with considerably more force than a leaf, though, and then the ground below, where he remains lying in a boneless heap.

“Sam!” Dean yells, thinking that the spirit is a lot smarter than he generally likes them; it understands that Sam is the one who knows how to do this ritual and went straight for him, not even bothering to push Dean face first into the nearest puddle of mud. He also thinks that he’s going to rip this spirit to fucking shreds.

His brother is already trying to get back to his feet as Dean starts to run over to him. He looks at Dean and speaks, but his voice hardly carries. Dean sees the shake of his head, though, and the somewhat uncoordinated gesturing towards the doll that’s still lying on the ground like something completely harmless.

He understands. Sam’s fine. Dean has to take care of the spirit first. He changes directions and goes for the doll, seeing out of the corner of his eyes how Sam gets slammed against the tree again and forces himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

The doll goes into the oil-filled hole without resistance. Dean assumes that he’s to burn it now, but it seems too simple this way. It’s never this simple.

Behind him, Sam is making noises as if he’s trying to speak but can’t get the words out. Dean can’t pay attention to him now because if he does, the ghost won’t be defeated and it’ll kill Sam and then Dean and who knows how many others.

That sometimes you could only save someone by turning away from them in order to kill whatever’s attacking them from a distance was one of the hardest lessons to learn for Dean as he got deeper and deeper into his father’s world. Especially when it came to Sammy. Both him and Sam learned the lesson well. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Fortunately, the ghost seems unable to take care of both of them at the same time. Dean turns his attention to the things lying around before him. The empty bottle of oil. Thyme and a bag of what he knows to be chicken bones ground to a fine powder. Sam got them out of the bag after switching to this ritual.

Now Dean can only hope there isn’t a specific order to this.

Behind him Sam’s making noises as if he’s being chocked. There are words in there somewhere, though, between the gasps. Words Dean identifies as Latin. So there’s an incantation as well. Just fucking perfect.

He’d happily read it out loud, but thanks to Sam’s freaky brain making such things unnecessary, they don’t have it with them in written form. Or maybe Sam has considered Dean might need it and put the books he found the rituals in into his duffle – but even if he has, Dean has no time to search for them and then figure out which is the right one.

So he only says “Take that, asshole!” as he throws a handful of bone-dust and the thyme onto the doll and sets it on fire.

The scream sounds again, even angrier than before, full of rage and panic. Dean knows that kind of scream and knows to expect the blow that sends him flying. It’s not as strong as it’s been before; the screaming continues as Dean rolls over the ground until he hits something hard.

The screaming subsides, but the unnatural wind around them picks up speed. It’s not the same force that knocked him over, though, and it’s not strong enough to toss him around again as Dean pulls himself upright on the object he rolled against and identifies it as the impala.

In the absence of the terrible noise, Dean can hear another voice: it’s Sam, chanting Latin with increasing strength and only interrupted by the occasional cough now the spirit has released its hold on his throat. It’s an oddly comforting sound, like a voice from a better past, and Dean’s tempted to lose himself in the messed up normality of their lives, before a particularly harsh cough pulls him back to the present and a brother who’s just been strangled and is not alright in so many ways.

Sam keeps reciting the words as Dean runs over to him. He’s leaning heavily against the tree he was thrown and held against and he doesn’t stop chanting even after Dean arrives and starts fussing over him. Fortunately it only takes him another five seconds, and with a final, distant scream, the air falls silent.

Sam slumps over. It’s as if all tension suddenly left his body, but he doesn’t go down as Dean has feared, nor does he start twitching and convulsing because he was choked and Sam doesn’t like being choked. Being choked leaves him with shivers and nervous trembling and the occasional hell seizure that eats a little more of him away in weeks of relieved agony.

Sam draws in a deep breath. “I guess that was the right one,” he says.

“The ghost certainly agrees.” Dean’s still patting his brother down. It’s dark. He didn’t really realise how dark it is before now. The moon and nearby streetlamps provide enough illumination to not run into things, and the burning doll does its part as well, but when it comes to details, it’s quite inadequate. It doesn’t, for example, let Dean see the dark blood on Sam’s dark shirt before he feels the wetness and his hands come up sticky. “Oh shit, Sammy,” he mutters.

Sam looks at the blood on Dean’s hands with a blank face. When he flinches, grinds his teeth, and moans in pain it’s like an afterthought.

“Okay, let me see. Can you move?” Dean gently pulls Sam forward, towards the fire and the lights, and Sam follows slowly and with only a slight limp. He’ll live. If he can still walk, he’ll live, and he won’t have any flashbacks now. Certainly that would already have happened.

The front of Sam’s jacket is virtually drenched in blood around the shoulder. It covers part of his chest and arm, and as he walks around his brother Dean can see that the back of his jacket is bloody was well. That’s not good at all.

Also, there’s something sticking out of Sam’s back.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” Dean tells him. “No excuse to whine, so don’t even think about it. But we should probably have it checked out somewhere.”

“You can take care of it,” Sam says. His voice is just a little slurred. He’s excused because he’s lost blood and this probably hurts like…

Well, it probably hurts a lot.

“Of course I could, Sammy. But there’s a hospital nearby, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t make use of it.”

“I can take care of it,” Sam insists. He reaches for the thing stuck inside him – something thin and so bloody it’s unrecognizable. Dean is willing to bet on it being a bark from the tree Sam was slammed into and pulls his brother’s hand down before he can touch it.

“No, Sammy, you can’t. Let’s go, before you bleed out.”

Sam doesn’t protest any further, and if he hadn’t been worried before, this would have been enough to raise Dean’s alarm level by a good couple of levels.

He doesn’t even mind the blood on the seats of his beloved car.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam’s quiet on the way to the hospital. Dean doesn’t really fancy seeing his brother in pain, but finds himself thinking that it would be nice if Sammy would at least wince every now and then, or complain, or acknowledge in any other way that he has just been impaled on something rough and dirty that’s still stuck in his shoulder. At one point, just minutes from their destination, his little brother leans forward, folding in on himself until he can press his hands to his ears without having to move his shoulders too much, and squeezes his eyes shut.

“Shut up,” he whispers, so quietly Dean can hardly make out his voice over the roar of the impala’s engine. “Shut up, shut up. Shut up.”

“Sam!” Dean snaps harshly, reaching over to give Sam’s shoulder a hard shake. Sam rewards him with a startled, pain filled yell, and wraps one hand around his injured shoulder. His breath suddenly comes in sharps gasps and Dean feels horrible because he did that on purpose.

He feels horrible, but it worked.

Sam is white as paper when they enter the hospital, sweating and shaking and looking like he’ll kneel over any moment. It gets them the attention of the doctors and nurses at once, which is good, because Dean really doesn’t feel like having to shoot someone to get first in line. He also doesn’t feel like letting Sam out of his sight, but he has to as the doctors take him away. So Dean spends a couple of hours pacing the waiting room, drinking about two gallons of coffee and snapping at anyone who doesn’t have anything useful to say to him.

Eventually, Dean can go see Sam again. His brother has been patched up and placed in a six-bed room. Dean thinks that is fucking fantastic – if there’s one thing Sam doesn’t need right now it’s the company of strangers – and has him ready to leave as soon as the transfusion has gotten enough blood back into him. Sam’s doctor protests, would like to keep Sam there for the night or the rest of the week, but even doped up on painkillers, Sam is only too happy to sign out against medical advice and get back to the quiet solidarity of their motel room.

His left arm is in a sling from the wound in his shoulder and also for the wrist he somehow managed to sprain, probably just to make sure the sling won’t feel underused taking care of only one injury. He has two broken ribs and is limping due to a twisted ankle, but all things considered, he’s gotten off easy.

Still, it’s bad enough for Dean to give them another night in the motel. Originally, he planned to hit the road as soon as the case was over, as they like to do, but even with the good painkillers from the hospital, a long ride in the car would be too much for a guy who by all rights should still be in hospital right now. Dean has no illusions there; he knows that Sam shouldn’t really be up and about already, and no matter how much he’d hate being stuck in this city, he’d have given his brother all the time he needs to recover under medical observation if not for the greater concern of keeping Sam away from places and people that make him uncomfortable, especially when he is as… distracted as he was today.

They leave one day later. Sam’s feeling better by then, which in this case means that he’s aware that he’s in an awful lot of pain. Dean fills him up with painkillers, and checks his wounds for signs of infection, and makes him wear his sling, and then he puts him on the passenger seat of their car and threatens to swap his shampoo for tooth bleach if he gets out again while Dean loads their stuff into the trunk.

He hopes the medication will make Sam tired so he’ll sleep through the worst of it. God knows Sam needs sleep, too. (Sadly, God doesn’t care.)  Last night was better than most in that regard, but once in a while Dean would like his brother to get a good night’s rest not forced on him by drugs and blood loss. Still, seven hours of sleep, no nightmares. As nights go, it wasn’t so bad.

Dean got less sleep than that, but he gets more in general, so that’s not a problem in regard to the hours of driving he’s facing. Sam can’t take over the wheel today, or anytime soon, but that doesn’t matter because in a couple of hours, Sam will feel so terrible that they have to turn in somewhere anyway.

For the first hour luck seems to be with Dean. The weather is good and the road nearly empty, allowing him to go just above speed limit. He has the window open and the music loud enough to be heard over the wind without being annoying to Sam, who sits slumped beside him, his hair hanging in his face, and doesn’t move.

When he speaks, it comes unexpected, because Dean thought he was asleep.

“Ironic,” Sam proclaims.

Dean throws him a look, suddenly nervous; this seems too random. “What’s ironic, Sammy?”

Sam takes a deep breath and lifts his head to look at the road ahead. He doesn’t seem confused or spaced out. “Caithy and her friends. They had originally planned to perform the ritual on the third, but managed to creep each other out so much with stories about how the number three is connected to ghosts that they postponed it for one day.”

“The number three is connected to ghosts?” Dean hasn’t heard that one before.

“They thought so, because the supernatural activity is highest in the third hour of the day.”

“Did they?” Dean snorts. “I guess that makes sense. Or something. Anyway, why is it ironic?”

“Because the ritual is Japanese, and in Japan, the number four is considered a bad omen.”

“And they smartly decided to do it on the fourth of April. I see.” According to a road sign, they’re about to cross over into the next state. Dean wonders if they’ll make it through this one before they have to turn in. “Do you think that had anything to do with Caithy’s bad luck?”

“No, unless the ghost emigrated from Japan.” Sam lets his head drop against the window. “It’s just ironic, that’s all.”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam loses track of the road at some point, when breathing through the pain starts to demand all of his attention. He loves the impala, wouldn’t trade it for any other car in the world, but it’s not really built for someone with his long legs. During long rides his back starts hurting without fail, leaving him to squirm around uncomfortably in search for a posture that offers some relief while causing Dean to make fun of his ‘bathroom dance’. “If you need to take a leak, you have to let me know,” he’d say. “You’re a guy, and there’s plenty of trees around.” And Sam would grimace at him and punch him in the arm, making some remark about the size of Dean’s car, which would cause Dean to get all defensive of his baby and Sam to make fun of them both.

Sam isn’t squirming now. He wishes he was, wishes Dean would make fun of him, but even if he was Dean wouldn’t, because apparently that is insensitive now or something like that. As if Dean had ever cared about sensitivity.

As he sits in the car for hours and hours on end, Sam doesn’t even have the energy to be frustrated. He doesn’t squirm because moving hurts too much. Breathing hurts, too. He sits quietly, tries to fall asleep, tries to keep very still as if like this, the pain won’t find him. Every now and then he shifts every so slightly, hoping to find a way to relax his aching muscles, but even the slightest movement only fuels the pain and he gives up on the idea, until he forgets about it and tries again. Everything else blurs, becomes unimportant. Sam can’t find sleep, but he pretends, for Dean’s sake.

He’s still capable of feeling guilty, though. Sam knows Dean didn’t get much sleep last night, and were things different, he would have handed over the wheel long ago. With Sam hurt like this, driving is out of the question for him and Dean has to go all the way. It won’t get any better tomorrow or anytime soon.

And even as he thinks about it, Sam becomes aware that he’s still in denial. Still pretending it’s only his injuries that prevent his brother from letting him drive.

He only realises he’s been drifting when the car comes to a stop and Sam looks up to find they are in the parking lot of a motel. The grey light of an overcast day meets his eyes and for a moment he’s disoriented and confused. By the look of it, it’s only afternoon, no later than four. Sam thought it was much later, had expected the sky to be darkening already. His sense of time is shot to hell.

He looks to the other side and finds Dean, his hands still on the wheel, staring at Sam with an intensity that makes him uncomfortable. When Sam stares back, Dean turns to open the door and climbs out.

“I’m gonna get us a room,” he says casually, like he has thousands of times before. “Wait here.”

As if Sam could do anything else.

Dean is gone for a while. It feels like a long time, but probably isn’t. Sam waits with his door open, his feet on the ground outside, his uninjured shoulder resting heavily against the back of the seat. Breathing in and out.

“You tired already?” he asks when Dean comes back, because he can’t help it.

Dean opens his mouth, and Sam expects him to point out that it’s Sam who looks like he might have trouble making it as far as their room, or to remind him that not everyone got the luxury of sleep last night. But Dean closes his mouth without saying anything, and Sam becomes aware that there’s nothing he could say that wouldn’t lay the blame for the early stop on Sam in some way, where it belongs.

He regrets having said anything at all. Dean flips him the finger, though, and that makes him feel a little bit better.

They’ve both been hurt often enough to know that there is no sense in false pride when they are injured so badly they can hardly move for the pain and can’t afford to make it worse. So Sam doesn’t protest when Dean pulls him out of the car and helps him to their room, just stumbles along with his head spinning and aching. He wants to lie down, sleep a few hours. Then he’ll feel better. Rest is all he needs now.

And tomorrow they can drive a little further – until Dean gets too tired, because Sam still won’t be able to take over the wheel.

It sucks, but their lives have always been like this.

Cold air brushes over Sam’s face when he crosses the threshold into the motel and makes him shiver. Dean leads him all the way to the second bed, and that would have annoyed Sam after all, had he had the energy for it. Instead, he just sinks down and shivers.

“Frigging cold in here,” he mutters.

One second later, Dean’s rough, calloused palm touches his forehead. He unwillingly moves his head away.

“Dude,” he protests. “I’m not a child. And I don’t have a fever.”

“You’re shivering.” Sam can practically hear Dean frowning.

“Yeah, because it’s cold.”

“No, it’s not. I mean, it’s not cosy, but it’s not exactly arctic either.”

Sam looks up at that and finds Dean looking down at him, looking not at all as if he were cold. Sam frowns back at him. “There must be something wrong with _you_ , then,” he concludes, because he’s had a lot of fevers in his life and knows what that feels like. This isn’t the oversensitivity to low temperatures that comes with overheated skin. It’s the cold that comes from the air being cold. “Besides, I was fine outside. I didn’t spontaneously develop a fever the moment I came in here.”

“Right, I’ve seen how fine you were. That’s why I practically had to carry your ass over here from the car.”

“At least I wasn’t cold.”

“Sure there’s nothing wrong with you? Because it’s not exactly cosy outside either.”

As if on cue, the first few fat raindrops fall onto the parking lot and splatter on the pavement like human bowels filed with blood. Dean goes to close the door and comes back to offer Sam a hand.

“Let’s get you warmed up. Feel up to taking a shower?”

Sam takes a moment to think about it, then decides that standing mostly still under the hot spray is not outside his abilities at the moment, even though it will prolong the time he has to wait until he can stretch out on the bed.

… or curl up on the bed, that is, to conserve as much body heat as possible.

The thought of getting naked and then, after the shower, stand around naked and wet until he has dried and dressed himself isn’t exactly tempting. Also, the standing around naked period will be considerably longer than usual because moving hurts, as does applying pressure to almost any part of his body. So that will take time, but Sam’s not going to humiliate himself by letting his brother dry and dress him.

But he’s also feeling sweaty and disgusting after a long drive of feeling miserable, so Sam takes Dean’s hand and allows himself to be pulled to his feet before making his way to the bathroom on his own.

What little enthusiasm he has for the task dies when he sees the state the shower room is in. The floor is dirty and the drain full of hairs. When he turns on the shower, the water explodes out of the head a couple of times before finding an only slightly sputtering output. Apparently the room hasn’t been used in a while, because the first gush of water is the colour of rust and dirt on the walls has no hope of ever coming off.

At least the water gets hot quickly. Sam’s relief over that dies almost immediately, though, because it actually gets _too_ hot, and when he adds even a little cold water, it turns icy.

Millimetres of adjustment decide between far too hot and far too cold, with no middle ground. In the end Sam manages to get himself clean by adjusting the temperature a lot and using the ten seconds it needs to go from one extreme to the other. It’s annoying and exhausting and in the meantime he’s trembling in the cold air. All in all it’s one of the most miserable showers he’s ever taken.

It’s followed by a miserably getting dry. He’s still pretty damp when he gets into his shirt and sweatpants that are cold and uncomfortable from having lain in the trunk all day. Even with the good painkillers from the hospital it hurts like a bitch and Sam needs so long Dean starts banging against the door in concern only barely masked as impatience.

When Sam leaves the bathroom, he can’t move his left arm anymore and every breath hurts.

He just wants to sleep.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

It’s dark when he opens his eyes. Dark and quiet, like the entire room is a picture painted in shadows. Silence of the kind that enhances every sound, makes wind in the trees sound like a presence in the room. But there is no sound. There’s just his heart beating wildly and he doesn’t know why it does.

Dean is a dark silhouette by the window. He’s staring at him; Sam knows Dean is staring at him, that he’s being stared at. He doesn’t know what to do. Wants to say something to make Dean move and become real but he doesn’t do anything, has forgotten how. He’s cold and wishes Dean would be with him, make him warmer, but Dean only stares, is only shadows.

In the dark Sam drifts back to sleep and starts to dream without being able to tell.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The shower is a piece of shit. Dean curses a lot and quite loudly as he struggles with the setting and eventually gives up and just stands under the hot spray to jump out as soon as he can’t stand it anymore. It takes him five turns to get the shampoo out of his hair, and when he is almost done, the hot water runs out and causes him to jump away from the suddenly icy water with a yelp.

He’s still announcing his anger to the world when he steps out of the bathroom, but falls silent immediately when he sees that that Sam’s already asleep on the bed. Fortunately, his little brother is too out of it for Dean’s curses to wake him.

Looking closer, Dean can see that Sam is still shivering. He’s stretched out on his back though, instead of curling up, and only half under the sheets, which tells Dean that his brother is in too much pain to lay on his side.

He still doesn’t think it was a mistake to get Sam out of the hospital, yet he wishes he didn’t have to – not alone because Sam would recover a lot faster if he could rest and had proper medication and care at any time.

Which is why Dean is on the way to South Dakota and Bobby’s, the closest thing to a home they have besides the impala. Bobby doesn’t have the drugs or medical knowledge to compete with a hospital, but it is still better than anything else he could offer for Sam’s recovery.

A part of Dean wonders if he could use this incident to get his brother away from hunting for good. He doesn’t acknowledge the thought, though, because it’s a good friend of the ugly wish that Sam had been hurt a little worse, just bad enough to injure him permanently and force him to stay home, where he’s safe, and the two thoughts only ever come as a pair. Besides, Sam won’t stop while he can still do anything useful, and were he to think it over, Dean would realise that he doesn’t want him to stop hunting either. Not when more and more often it seems to be the only thing keeping his little brother sane.

All those thoughts hardly even make it to the surface of Dean’s mind as he’s walking over to the bed, making use of the opportunity to check Sam’s temperature again, without having his hand slapped away for his trouble. He frowns, because despite his violent shivering, Sam doesn’t appear to have a fever after all.

One less thing to worry about, then. Dean won’t complain about having been wrong this time. He still worries about the shivering, but then, exhaustion can have that effect, and Sam looks pretty exhausted right now.

After taking the blanket from the second bed, Dean spreads it over his brother and tucks him in. Then he does a final check of the salt lines he left when Sam was in the shower and flops on his bed. To his surprise, he finds that the TV actually works.

By nightfall, Sam is still asleep, and still shivering softly. Cursing their luck and his lack of blanket, Dean ever so carefully slips under the two blankets on the other bed and ever so gently wraps himself around his brother. If Sam wakes before he can sneak away again, he’d better not mention this to anyone, ever.

Dean is still awake and staring at the dark when Sam’s shivering subsides, finally, about an hour later.


	4. Chapter 3

A phone call confirms Bobby is willing to take them in. Dean didn’t expect anything else. The problem is getting there. They need two days to get to South Dakota and another day to cross it. The motel rooms don’t get any better and neither does the weather. And the exhaustion that weights down Sam, turns him into a shivering, miserable mess with little reserves to fight the pain from his injuries starts to wear on Dean as well. He drives for hours, hesitates to stop for food because Sam won’t eat anyway and every stop prolongs the time until their next motel. He worries constantly about his brother, who withdraws further and further into himself. By the last day before Bobby’s, the heater of the impala is running full blast, but Sam still trembles and even Dean is beginning to feel cold.

It’s worse in the motels that usually have little to no heating at all. If Dean didn’t know that salt lines and a few protective sigils added for good measure keep any ghost away, he’d say the rooms are haunted.

Sam doesn’t sleep as much as Dean would like, is kept awake by pain and whatever it is he sees when he stares at the ceiling for hours. It keeps Dean awake for too long, and what sleep he gets is restless. By the time they reach Bobby’s salvage yard, Dean is running on fumes, shivering almost as badly as Sam and looking forward to the hopefully long time they’ll spend in the familiar and well heated rooms more than he thought he would.

Bobby has their beds ready, greets them with a few gruff words and coffee that Sam declines and Dean accepts gladly. It’s better than anything he’s had in a long time, warming him from the inside, and for the first time in days he begins to feel a little less frozen. His hands are still trembling, though, speaking of lack of sleep and urgent need of a bed.

He’ll sleep when he can. When he knows Sam’s okay, is finally getting real rest.

Bobby gave them the downstairs bedroom, the one he had installed while in a wheelchair and never used again after regaining the use of his legs. It only has one bed, but Bobby moved the cot inside. The cot that usually stands in the panic room. It got proper blankets and the sheets are hanging down almost to the floor as if to mask what it really is. Dean assigns Sam the real bed and Sam doesn’t protest. He retreats right after they arrive, skipping dinner. Dean tries not to be a hovering mother hen, so he finishes his coffee before he goes to check on his brother and finds him asleep on the bed, still dressed in his clothes, down to the sling that supports his left arm.

“How’s he doin’?” Bobby asks when he comes in, quietly so he won’t disturb Sam.

Dean shrugs, the gesture betraying his helplessness. “He’s been better,” he says. “At least he’s sleeping. Hey, Bobby,” he adds after a second of silence. “You have any painkillers? The really good stuff, I mean?”

Bobby hesitates. “None I’d want to give him,” he finally says. Dean understands. The last thing Sam needs is drugs that make him lose his touch with reality.

“Great,” he mutters.

“I’ve got enough of the normal stuff to get him through this alright,” his old friend reminds him.

“He doesn’t have a headache, Bobby.”

“It’s better than nothing.” A hand clasps Dean’s shoulder to give it a brief squeeze. “He’s been through worse than this.”

It’s meant to be comforting, but it only makes Dean want to laugh, and it wouldn’t be a happy laugh. Of course Sam’s been through worse. They could hack off Sam’s limbs and feed him his own eyeballs before setting him on fire, and could still say he’s been through worse without lying.

“How’d your latest hunt go?” Bobby eventually asks in a gratefully accepted attempt to change the topic.

Dean sighs. “Well, you’re looking at the result.”

“I see,” Bobby mutters. “Did you kick it right back, at least?”

“Right back to hell, or wherever it came from. It got to Sammy before that.”

With one last look at Sam, Dean wordlessly suggests they move somewhere they can talk without having to keep their voices down.

“How did he do on the hunt?” Bobby asks when they are sitting in the living room. The question rubs Dean in the wrong way even though he knows that Bobby is genuinely concerned for his brother.

“Fine,” he says rather harshly, maybe a little harsher than he should have. “He did great. Exorcised the stupid doll. I couldn’t have done it without him. Guess that’s why the thing focused on him.”

“I never said Sam wasn’t a damn good hunter,” Bobby tries to pacify him.

“But you implied he can’t watch out for himself. Or for me. Or that I’d let him go out there when he’s not up for it and get himself killed. Shit goes wrong on hunts, Bobby. It’s not like either of us has never been hurt before.”

Bobby doesn’t answer, just looks at him with the kind of gruff patience he has down to a form of art. It has the – probably desired – effect of making Dean feel guilty for snapping at him and make him think about his situation.

Which in turn makes Dean sink down onto the couch and bury his face in his hands, just for a moment allowing himself to feel the desperation he usually fights off every second of every day.

He hates living in a world where they have conversations like this.

“I know he’s not…” He trails off, tries again. “I mean, he was fine that day, he really was. But sometimes he isn’t. And I’m…” He stops again, laughs roughly as if it could somehow make his confession less painful. “I’m so fucking scared, Bobby. I want to keep him from hunting, but if he doesn’t… Well. He’s not going to stop anyway, and I won’t force him.” Sam doesn’t have an awful lot on control over anything anymore. Dean is going to leave him the control over what to do with his own life, not matter how hard it is.

“You’re losing him either way,” Bobby says bluntly. When Dean throws him a sharp glare, he sighs sadly. “You ever think that he wants to keep hunting because he hopes for a clean, easy end?”

“I think he wants to keep hunting because what else is he supposed to do except sit around and watch his life fall apart,” Dean snaps, overcome by the old anger that never quite leaves no matter how hard he fights to keep it down.

“Yeah, well…” Now it’s Bobby who seems to be at a loss, because he can’t tell Dean anything he doesn’t already know and nothing that will help, and probably regrets having brought it up at all. “Just, you know. Watch over him.”

And just like that, without even trying, he’s made Dean feel guilty again, because he sounds so helpless, and Dean is reminded that Bobby loves Sam as well. Not as much as Dean does because that’s simply not possible, but still more that almost anyone else in the world. And he, too, can see how Sam is deteriorating; how he gets thinner every time they meet, and how the shadows under his eyes become deeper, and there’s not a single damn thing he can do to help him.

Maybe he’s even more aware of it because he doesn’t see Sam every day, so the changes have to be all the more shocking whenever they come here. Also, Bobby was never one for denial.

“Of course,” Dean mutters, tiredly. “You know I will.”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam screams in his sleep that first night at Bobby’s, like he hasn’t in a long time. Not even after his last seizure his nightmares were that bad. He tosses around, fighting against unseen enemies, and sometimes he stops screaming for a while to replace the sounds with quiet whimpers and sobs.

Just listening to it breaks Dean’s heart. He has to wake his brother up, but he doesn’t. He has to pull Sammy back to reality, but he doesn’t. He has to save Sammy, but he doesn’t. Instead, he lies on the cot and listens, feeling pain and desperation and the urgent need to get up and do _something_. But he doesn’t. He hates himself as he listens to his brother’s suffering and doesn’t even try.

Eventually he becomes aware of the silence that surrounds him. It’s thick like cotton, filling the room and stretching on across the world outside the window – the kind of silence that only exists inside solid houses in remote places, far from the busy streets or the shuffle of the cities. His heart is beating heavily in his chest, too quickly, almost causing him pain.

Suddenly realising what the silence might mean, Dean sits up on his cot, his heart beating in his throat now. He looks over at the bed, and the grey glow reflected by the clouds outside is enough to let him see Sam, who’s still asleep, who isn’t moving, and who doesn’t seem to have moved at all the entire night.

A dream, then. A fucking dream. Dean lets out a shaky breath, runs a hand over his face and isn’t even surprised when it comes back wet.

He has a lot of nightmares lately and the only reason he doesn’t go back to his tested method of self-medicating is because Sam’s nightmares are worse ( _Sam_ is worse) and Dean has to be there for him. He can’t allow himself to wallow in self-pity.

Most of the time, he dreams of hell. It’s worse than it has been in years, almost as bad as right after, when the bliss of being topside was beginning to wear off and it hit him every day that the torture he dreamt of at night had really happened to him. It’s not hard to figure out why those memories come back so intensely in his sleep now, when his mind is dealing with hell every fucking day as he tries not to imagine what Sam’s hell looked (looks) like.

Yet, in a way, this dream was worse, harmless as it seems in comparison. When he wakes up after dreaming of hell, he does so knowing it’s in the past and won’t happen ever again. In this case he woke up knowing it’ll get worse.

Suddenly, he longs to climb into bed with his brother and hold him like he had when they were younger. He almost wishes Sam did have nightmare, so he’d have an excuse to do just that. But Sam’s sleep is calm, at least on the outside, and Dean is not a child anymore.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The day after arriving at Bobby’s has Sam feeling a lot better than he did in ages, as if just being here is doing him good. Maybe it’s the familiarity of the house, the sense of security he associates with it, or simply the exhaustion of the trip and his injuries that pushed him just as far as he could go. In any case, he sleeps better that first night than he did in a long time. If he dreams, he doesn’t remember. The painkillers Bobby gave him dull the pain to bearable levels and for the first time in a week he feels warm and comfortable. He almost forgot how it feels not to be cold.

He wakes up at night once and is lulled back to sleep by the sound of Dean’s deep, even breathing on the cot beside him. This is home, he thinks then, not meaning the place. Never truly waking up in the first place, he doesn’t ruin the peaceful moment by hoping that maybe things will stay this way and by some rare and undeserved miracle everything will be alright after all.

He would have been disappointed (again) anyway, because not long after he gets out of bed the next morning, things start to get worse again. He wakes up alone, Dean long since having left, and for one moment, despite knowing how ridiculous that is, he feels abandoned. The painkillers have worn off overnight, and the pain climbs from distracting to annoying to nearly unbearable in a matter of minutes. He needs to use the bathroom so he has to leave the warm cocoon of his blanket, and moving still fucking hurts.

And it’s cold again, outside the bed. Which can be easily explained by the weather not being too warm and Bobby’s house being old and not that well insulated, but Sam’s fed up with always feeling cold. He’s shivering again not three painful steps out of bed. The bathroom is positively icy, and he feels like taking a shower to warm up but that would mean undressing and redressing and right now the thought of having to move his arms in a way that’ll get him out of his shirt is enough to put him off the idea quite quickly.

By the time he gets back to bed, the warmth inside has fled and he needs longer than can possibly be fair to warm them up again. It never quite works. His feet remain icy no matter what he does and he can’t seem to shake the cold from his bones. It makes him wish, for a second, that he was a child again, because if he was cold as a child, Dean would crawl into bed with him and warm him up.

Sam doesn’t really care about getting warm. He just wants Dean to be here with him, as close as possible, because he feels like shit. But Dean isn’t even anywhere near him and it’s not something he can ask for now he’s older than ten.

Dean seems to have forgotten Sam is older than ten, or even five, when he comes in half an hour later and scolds his little brother for having gotten out of bed at all. They’re here so Sam can rest properly, he says, which means staying in bed and letting other people bring him anything he needs until he is significantly better. Sam points out that there are some things he has to do on his own. He doesn’t point out that Dean wasn’t actually there to help him with anything, because it would have made Dean make some casual, slightly insulting remark and kept him from leaving Sam on his own for at least a week. Sam already feels guilty enough from chaining his brother to him the way he does without offering anything in return but pain and despair.

Things are tense the next few days. Sam feels constantly watched, monitored, and it’s oppressive, makes him irritable, even though he knows Dean means well. Dean insists on taking care of Sam much more than he has to, doesn’t let Sam’s grumpiness push him away even if sometimes he does snap back. He provides him with books and his laptop and even the occasional crossword puzzle so Sam won’t get bored while he stays in bed and doesn’t get out as per the doctor’s (read: Dean’s) orders.  He actually manages to leave Sam alone a lot to help Bobby with the cars or go out as Sam wants him to. But even so, Sam still feels like he’s under observation every minute of the day. It makes him nervous, makes it impossible to really relax.

(It doesn’t help that sometimes, at night, he wakes up to find Dean watching him from the doorway, or the foot of the bed – always in darkness, so Sam can never make out his face and he doesn’t know if Dean can tell he’s awake. He never moves, as if he didn’t dare to, and Dean never comes closer.)

Also, Bobby doesn’t have wireless internet. Dean doesn’t complain – he seems to believe that Sam has some magic trick that makes him stumble over a new case as soon as he opens a search engine – but it irks Sam that he can’t access his emails or read the news all the time.

He’s left with organizing his files, reading up on things he has saved on his hard drive long ago and making notes on creatures or phenomenons they’ve encountered.

It’s not really unwelcome since this is something he wanted to do for ages and never got around to. The Hitori Kakurenbo ritual is recorded for whoever might one day get hold of his laptop and find it useful, and for once Bobby is actually around to answer questions. Sam has to admit he likes that, spending time with Bobby over research, recording and without any urgency or need. He’s missed that.

And he can’t actually remember the last time they did it, like this, just for the sake of it.

But there are files on his laptop he can’t remember ever having seen before. They are all related to hunting, but the subjects are unfamiliar to him. Once Sam realises that he must have collected them during the time he had no soul, he closes the laptop and spends the next two hours trying not to throw up.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

 

He’s having nightmares almost every night now.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

One afternoon, when he feels almost good and manages to talk Dean and Bobby into getting out for a few hours, Sam leaves the suffocating confines of the bedroom to sit in the library for a while. The room is not much larger than the one he escaped from and offers much less space, but for Sam it’s more a matter of not being in the bedroom than going anywhere else. He just had to get out, feeling as if something inside those walls was waiting for a chance to eat him.

And no matter how much he loves them, it’s nice that for once his brother and surrogate father are not around to bitch about him doing outrageous things like walking.

His feet are cold, bare on the carpet-less floor, and his twisted ankle still protests with every step. He shivers and rubs his upper arms as he sits down at the single table. It’s still a little cold inside the house and the library isn’t heated, but outside the window, golden afternoon light falling on young leaves makes a promise of warmer days to come.

Sam smiles at the sight and contemplates getting a cup of hot coffee. Dean doesn’t let him have coffee since he got hurt, but he thinks it would be a good idea.

Something drops to the floor behind him.

Sam jumps, nearly falling off the chair in his haste to turn around. His heart is pounding in his chest, and it doesn’t even slow down when he sees the thin book lying perfectly harmless on the floor beneath the shelf.

He must have brushed against it when he walked into the room, bringing it off balance. The explanation is so simple and Bobby’s house is protected like no other from ghosts and spirits. Yet Sam stares at the book as if it’ll jump up to attack him any moment, kind of expecting it will.

 _There’s nothing in here but what you allow to enter_ , he thinks, remembers. Sam stands abruptly and leaves to room to get his coffee, laughing at himself for being silly, trying to guess when Dean and Bobby will come back so he can avoid a lecture. He drinks his coffee in the kitchen and eventually decides to watch some TV in the living room, see if he can catch some news.

Before going there he returns to the library to put the fallen book back on the shelf.

It’s gone.

The sun is beginning to sink towards the horizon outside. A lone bird is singing in a nearby tree and there is no book lying on the floor of the library. Sam checks the shelves, tense and desperate, and finds no empty space in the rows of books. In fact, they are standing so tightly that no book could fall out even if it was already hanging halfway off the shelf.

Suddenly, Sam feels very cold and for once it has nothing to do with the lack of heating. His fists open and close at his side as if his hands don’t know what to do, and the half-forgotten pain from his injuries comes back, making it hard to breathe, making him feel dizzy. Like he’s about to throw up.

When he makes his way back to the room he shares with Dean, Sam is trembling and sweating, barely able to walk. The feeling of being watched, controlled and judged gets even stronger though Dean and Bobby aren’t anywhere near him. The urge to throw up grows stronger at the same time, but for reasons he can’t explain and doesn’t want to observe, the thought of going into the bathroom fills Sam with nearly paralyzing terror. He climbs onto the bed instead, curling up despite the pain it causes him and closes his eyes as if he were a child and still believed hiding beneath the blanket would protect him.

When Dean comes in not much later, Sam keeps his eyes shut and pretends to sleep. He hears his brother’s breathing right behind him for a long time, feels his attention like a threat. Only after Dean finally leaves the room, Sam finally sinks into an exhausted sleep full of monsters.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

They leave Bobby’s salvage yard after ten days. Sam is far from healed but claims he’s well enough to be on the road again, and Dean eventually gives in. Maybe his brother will even be able to handle a couple of hunts – as long as he sticks to research and they don’t spend too much time in the car. In fact, Dean is actively looking for some simple, basic hunts that don’t require Sam to help him in the field but will give them a reason to stay in one place for more than one night.

He would have preferred to stay in Sioux Falls a little longer, and Bobby didn’t seem to approve of their departure either if the glare he threw Dean was anything to go by. But Sam was getting edgy – jumping at the slightest noise and even noises that weren’t there, looking behind him or checking the shadows if he thought no one was watching, and never, ever relaxing. Dean hopes that getting back on the road will help his brother. If nothing else, a few hunts will provide distraction from whatever is haunting him.

Whatever is haunting him. Hah. That was a good one.

Dean feels confirmed in his decision to leave when Sam falls asleep on the passenger seat a mere hour down the road, as if he were a baby and the impala his cradle. Well, it used to be, so it’s hardly surprising that the car has a calming influence on him. Even Dean sleeps better in the car than anywhere else.

Which is a complete lie – he’s not twenty anymore, and more than two nights in a row sleeping cramped in the car make him stiff, sore and cranky. But his baby offers a sense of security he doesn’t have in any motel room, no matter how much salt he leaves at the door – even if it doesn’t let him stretch his legs.

Sadly, not even the rumble of the impala is enough to keep away the nightmares. Dean is uncomfortably reminded of all the times he had to wake a twitching and whimpering little brother who’d not so much slept as passed out from exhaustion after Jessica had burned to death before his eyes. And of the much more recent event of coming home from a long afternoon out with Bobby to find Sam curled up and feverish in bed, shaken by nightmares and resisting every attempt to wake him. It had been the first and only time they left him alone and Dean has beaten himself up over it every day since, but, well, Sam had insisted they leave, and used his puppy-dog eyes on them. They never stood a chance.

Eventually, Dean can’t stand to watch his brother twitch helplessly out of the corner of his eyes any longer and sees himself forced to intervene. Sam wakes up quickly enough and blinks disoriented at the world that moves past him beyond the window. For a second Dean sees horror reflected in his eyes.

Dean considers telling him something about having had to wake him because he’s going to stop for dinner soon, but that would be a lie and Sam would know it, and really, what is the point in pretending?

“You were having a nightmare,” he informs his brother. “Sammy!” he adds forcefully when Sam doesn’t react to his words. “You hear me?”

He looks to his right to see Sam staring at him for another few seconds, before recognition gleams in his eyes. “Yeah…” he mutters. Then he blinks again and eventually keeps his eyes closed. The sharp line between his brows is back again. It rarely seems to leave nowadays. “My head hurts,” Sam adds, in that slightly distracted way he often has after a bad nightmare.

“Yeah, I know.” Dean looks for the next road sign, trying to figure out which town is nearest and if it’s time for a motel yet. They’ve left Sioux Falls barely three hours ago – far too early to stop, actually. Even with Sam fresh out of the hospital they usually made it at least five hours down the road before Dean acknowledged defeat and looked for the nearest place to stay.

One time Sam even asked to stop after hours of silence, and Dean had wanted to kick himself for not noticing how much pain he was in.

It’s not that he isn’t aware that his brother is dominating every aspect of his life to the point where he doesn’t really have anything of his own left. It’s just that he doesn’t care. His brother needs him. And every moment Dean doesn’t spend with him is a moment he will never get back.

For a while they drive in silence. Sam stays awake and stares out of the window, until he flinches and looks behind him. Whatever he’s looking for, it doesn’t seem to be on the backseat. He turns back around, but remains tense. After a minute, he looks back again, as if he heard something.

There’s nothing there, and it’s definitely going too far now. Being paranoid inside motel rooms is one thing, but it’s another thing believing the impala is haunted.

“How about we stop for a snack? I’m pretty hungry.”

Sam makes a sound of vague agreement that basically just says ‘I don’t care what you do, I’ll just sit beside you and stare at whatever’s in my direct line of sight while I’m trying to convince myself that I’m not in hell anymore.’

He needs longer and longer to snap out of it.

They just passed a town and the next one is almost an hour away if they keep to the speed limit. There’s a roadside diner ten minutes down the road, though, and Sam doesn’t complain when Dean drives off the highway. He’s actually feeling a little hungry now, and if nothing else, it’ll get Sam out of the car for a while.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Dean seems resigned to the fact that Sam doesn’t want to eat. He hasn’t felt like eating for so long that Dean must be to it by now. He never asks if Sam’s hungry anymore. Instead he places food – light food, fruit and salad – in front of Sam and doesn’t let him off the hook until he’s eaten something. He understands enough to never ask for much, but he seems determined to make sure his brother doesn’t starve.

What Dean doesn’t understand is that Sam doesn’t avoid food because he doesn’t feel like eating, or even because the smell makes him sick. (It still happens to Dean sometimes, on particularly bad days after especially bad nights. He avoids meat then, and Sam always pretends not to notice, because he knows now what his brother means when he says he doesn’t want to talk about it.) It’s simply that everything he eats tastes like ashes on his tongue, or like sulphur, or like intestines and eyeballs. Salad is okay, though. Salad only tasted like dust. And sometimes a little like blood.

Sam eats, for Dean’s sake. He can’t stop his brother from worrying about him, so he does what little he can to spare him any worry possible.

He has three cups of strong coffee with his salad in the diner. It should keep him awake for a while. Sam would go back to taking pills to stay awake, but they don’t go well with his pain medication and Dean doesn’t allow him to skip that. Maybe he would, if he knew what Sam is dreaming about.

He has been sleeping far too much lately. Sam hopes his lack of energy is caused by his injuries and medication, but some fear always remains that it’s not going to get better.

And that the shadows will never stop jumping at him. Knowing he’s paranoid doesn’t help in the least; it only means he’s well aware that he’s going crazy. Reality has been slipping away from Sam for months now, but it’s gotten so much worse since he got hurt. So maybe this, too, can be blamed on medication and exhaustion. Sam desperately hopes so.

Dean has a steak and potatoes which makes Sam happy. It means that he has so far succeeded in not letting his brother know how much the smell of meat freaks him out.

Dean also gets some take out for later. They’re probably going to eat it in whatever motel they’re going to stop in since lately Dean doesn’t like to go out after checking in. Sam hopes that that, too, will stop when he’s better.

He hates being the thing his brother is chained to. Sometimes he wishes he was dead already, but that wouldn’t help either, because Dean would still be miserable then. He hates that no matter what happens his brother can only lose.

Sam knows he’s the reason Dean can’t be happy either with or without him. Maybe he should blame their father – and God knows he did – for somehow, without meaning to, making his oldest believe from too young an age that he’s only worth something if he takes care of his little brother. But in the end it still all comes down to Sam and everything he did wrong.

He also knows what he’s going through is bringing back Dean’s own memories of hell. He noticed how tired Dean always looks now, how the lines in his face get deeper, the shadows around his eyes darker. Dean, too, is losing weight, even though his appetite is still far better than Sam’s. The situation is wearing him down, and whenever Sam tries to find a silver lining in anything that’s happening right now, the best thing he can come up with is the morbid thought that maybe, if Dean continues to suffer like this because of him, he will be a tiny little bit relieved when Sam is gone.

But that’s a silly hope and he knows it. Dean will be devastated. And the worst thing is that even when the last of his sanity is gone and he won’t wake from his nightmares anymore, Sam will still be alive, so Dean is never going to be able to move on.

He still has to figure out what to do about that.

Even though he doesn’t appreciate the food, Sam doesn’t mind the stop. He feels a little better now he’s away from the car and whatever he keeps seeing on the backseat, out of the corner of his eyes. It seems warmer here, too. He’s constantly cold, but it’s worse in the car. Dean keeps the heating running, even though he keeps telling Sam it’s not actually freezing. He never complains about being too hot. It’s just another sacrifice Dean makes for him.

As he sits on the bench in the diner and watches his brother eat, Sam wishes it was colder here as well. As much as he enjoys not shaking for once, in the end it makes him feel worse, because it implies that there’s really something wrong with the car. Inside the car. Something Dean can’t see and can’t feel, but there none the less.

Even the thought of spending another few hours in there makes Sam feel sick, makes him want to cry.

The impala used to be home and safety, and now it… isn’t.

It doesn’t help that the reception of the radio goes downhill hardly ten minutes after they hit the road again. It’s not something unusual – since they drive so far, they often lose one station and have to look for another. It’s one of the reasons why Dean prefers to listen to his tapes – apart from the stations “only playing pseudo-classic shit anyway”, of course.

But today it hits Sam when he’s already nervous and has to stop himself from turning around time and again for the hand he just knows it reaching for him from behind this very moment. The stuttering reception makes him want to jump out of the moving car, and then, in addition to the white noise creeping in, the song starts to loop, playing one line over and over, like a broken record.

 _‘Where’d ya get those eyes?’_ Frank Sinatra sings again and again. _‘Where’d ya get those, where’d ya get those eyes?’_

Then, from one second to the other, the radio jumps stations and they hear the final words of a radio-preacher’s speech about the justice of angels.

The radio isn’t supposed to do that.

It does nothing to make Sam feel better about the car. And if the hasty movement with which Dean turns off the radio is anything to go by, Sam is not the only one freaked out.

“The reception in this area has always been shitty,” Dean says while fishing for the box with the cassette tapes. Sam wants to ask who he’s trying to fool, wants to point out that the reception had nothing to do with that; there is something inside the car with them and it’s messing with the radio, and after all the experience they have with the supernatural and its effects on technology Dean has to be an idiot to believe anything else. But he doesn’t say anything, because saying it would make it real, and as long as Dean is humming along to his favourite songs with the midday sun in his hair and a smile on his lips, they’re safe.

Two hours later, the tape shows signs of damage, sounding all weird and distorted. Nothing is okay after that.


	5. Chapter 4

Something snaps in Sam when the cassette tape starts to act up, and Dean knows he’s to blame for that. Unstable and jumpy as Sam is, he shouldn’t have used the tapes in the first place. As much as he will defend their value over CDs any day, Dean is aware they are old and not made to last forever. To listen to them in the presence of a hunter who not only knows what faulty players can mean but is also paranoid and on the verge of a psychotic breakdown wasn’t the best idea ever.

Turning the music off comes too late. Dean just barely manages to keep his brother from losing it completely and jumping out of the moving car or something like that until they reach the nearest motel. Sam does jump out there, but at least he waits until the car is standing still.

Dean is hesitant to leave him alone, but Sam won’t accompany his brother to check in, and later, he refuses to enter the room Dean’s got them.

He doesn’t even try to explain it. In fact, Sam doesn’t say anything at all. He freaks out wordlessly but completely, and when Dean tries to drag him inside because it’s started to rain and Sam is getting drenched out there, he fights and struggles and doesn’t want Dean to touch him.

Dean doesn’t know what to do – Sam is still hurt and fragile not only because of his injuries. It’s easy for Dean to overpower him but almost impossible to do so without hurting him. In the end he does drag Sam inside because he can’t leave him outside, all the time wondering if this is it. If Sam has finally passed the point of no return, after which everything is only going to get worse.

Ever since the cursed case that got him hurt, Sam’s been getting worse. He’s been especially nervous inside motel rooms before the car started to drive him crazy. Only Bobby’s house had a calming effect on him that gave Dean hope but didn’t last for more than the first couple of days.

Now, his tolerance for closed rooms seems to have disappeared altogether. No matter how much Dean tries to talk him through the terrible task of being indoors, he doesn’t calm down. Dean doesn’t know if it’s that he can’t stand confined spaces anymore (and he doesn’t want to think about cages but he has to) or if it’s simply that there are more hidden places for whatever is haunting Sam to lurk in.

No matter what Dean tries, Sam still tries to get out of the door, back into the open and the rain. More than that – after minutes of struggling, Dean realises that Sam doesn’t only try to escape, he’s also tying to drag Dean out along with him, as if there were something inside he wants to protect his brother from.

Apparently, Sam has no trouble touching Dean, but he flinches away from _being_ touched. It makes Dean want to cry, because touching Sam can’t be avoided and he hates frightening his brother more than he already is – and because Sam showed this fear before, during his worst days. After seizures and flashbacks so bad he needed hours or even days to fully return to reality.

But Dean can’t give in to his desperation. He has to protect his brother and he can’t, not from this, and he hates that whatever he does will only hurt Sam more. In the end it only takes a pathetic few minutes until Dean has his brother thrown on one bed and pinned to the mattress, his fingers closing around too thin arms, his weight effortlessly holding Sam despite his struggle.

Eventually, something changes and Sam loses any hold on reality he had left. Something shifts, and Dean can tell the exact moment when Sam forgets where he is and who Dean is. Instead of trying to get out of the room, he tries to get away from the man holding him down, naked panic in his eyes.

Dean is scaring his brother, and he can’t let him go.

That all this is happening in silence is perhaps the most heartbreaking thing of all. Dean is the only one talking – Sam never makes a sound; even his sobs are strangled and nearly inaudible. Dean can only guess what kind of world he has slipped into that he doesn’t dare to utter a single word.

Or doesn’t see the point.

Ironically, it is also a blessing. Screams and shouts would have drawn the attention of the other guests and the receptionist. Perhaps they would have called the police; at the very least they would have come looking. Like this, their little drama happens in private.

Dean doesn’t even know what he’s going to do if Sam doesn’t calm down. He’ll hold him down until he passes out if he has to, but if the strange silence that has gripped his baby brother doesn’t last, he might have to knock him out before he alarms everyone within earshot. While Dean has knocked Sam out more often than brothers usually do, he would rather avoid that, if he can.

He doesn’t have to, in the end, because after seemingly endless minutes of silent struggle, it ends in the worst way possible. From one moment to the next, Sam stops fighting against Dean’s grip and starts seizing.

The initial seizure is over almost before the horror of what is happening has really settled into Dean’s mind. Afterwards Sam is left lying still and pale on the bed, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling.

He needs more than an hour to snap out of it.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam comes out of his flashback with a gasp. Dean is with him in a second, holding him as he struggles against unseen enemies (or bonds). After only moments, he passes out, finally falling into a fitful sleep, without doubt filled with nightmares.

It’ll be hours before he wakes up and Dean will find out how much of his little brother is left. Sam has never been this bad before, and his flashbacks have never been this long.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean mutters, not sure who he even means. Perhaps Castiel, whose prediction about Sam’s soul being so damaged he might stay locked in his mind, reliving Hell for the rest of his life, has been running through his head in an endless loop for far too long.

His hands are still trembling when he picks up his mobile and dials. It’s amazing how he can face ghouls and vampires and evil angels without batting an eye but seeing his brother twitching a little in a motel room is wrecking his nerves like nothing else.

“Hey Bobby,” he says after the older hunter accepted the call. “It’s okay. He finally snapped out of it.” Dean tries to keep his tone light, but he doesn’t think Bobby is buying it.

 _“He okay?”_ Bobby asks gruffly, trying to hide his own worry.

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. He just fell asleep without saying anything. And he was pretty shaken. But he’s always been shaken after… I mean, he came back, right? It’s going to be okay.”

There’s a lot of silence on the other end. Dean imagines Bobby trying to figure out a gentle way of letting him know he’s delusional.

“Listen, I just wanted to let you know he made it. I’m gonna call you after he woke up, okay?” Dean promises before Bobby has a chance to say anything.

 _“Alright,”_ Bobby agrees. _“But you tell me immediately if he gets worse, you hear me?”_

“Got it.” Dean can hear the rumble of Bobby’s old truck through the phone. Apparently, their old friend wasn’t kidding when the said he was coming as soon as possible.

 _“You sure you don’t want to come back here?”_

“We’ll see. I can’t tell you anything before I’ve talked to Sammy.”

If Sam will even be able to talk to him. Ever again. Dean ends the call while trying desperately not to wonder if complaining about the radio reception hours ago might have been the last real conversation he ever had with his brother.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

When Dean holds Sam after he woke up screaming nearly ten hours later and Sam keeps calling his name as if the sound alone could save him from hell, Dean is so relieved he could cry. He rocks Sammy back and forth, making soothing noises and stroking his back, not evening finding it in himself to feel bad about feeling happy while Sam is shaking and crying in his arms.

As expected, Sam doesn’t do well for days afterwards. He spaces out a lot, fights sleep with whatever means he can until he’s so tired he’s hallucinating on top of everything else, and if anything, his paranoia has gotten even worse. Which is hardly surprising, considering the lack of sleep.

But he’s talking, he knows where he is, he’s aware of his surroundings. Most of all, he isn’t in hell anymore. Ever since that first seizure in Rhode Island, Dean has been doing his best never to do the math. If two or three minutes felt like a week to Sam…

He’s checked out for an hour this time. Dean isn’t doing the math, but it still makes him feel sick.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Sam gets a fever but refuses to take any medication. In the face of this generally sucky situation, Dean doesn’t get any more sleep than his brother and not nearly as much food as he usually likes. He’s ready to fall over dead by the time Sam finally passes out and promptly passes out right beside him.

He dreams of his mother sitting beside him running a hand through his hair, the way she did when he was sick as a child. Dean wakes slowly, gradually leaving the dream behind, but the sensation of being stroked doesn’t disappear and he lies still, lingering in the feeling and the memory for as long as he can.

Eventually he comes to terms with the fact that he is awake now and there still is a tender hand in his hair. Opening his eyes, Dean finds his brother sitting on the edge of his bed, stroking his hair with an unreadable expression on his face. For a moment their eyes meet. Then Sam seems to become aware of what he is doing and retreats his hand, leaving Dean to mourn the loss.

“Sorry,” Sam says, though for what exactly, Dean can’t tell.

Dean needs a moment to come up with something to say. “Is that coffee I smell?” he asks as he pushes himself up to his elbows. He still feels heavy and tired, but he’s slept better than he has in weeks. Dreaming of his mom stroking his hair and waking up to Sam doing the same isn’t so bad either.

“I made breakfast,” Sam informs him. He stands and makes his way over to the small kitchen that is part of their room and actually reasonably clean. It consist of exactly a coffee machine and a microwave, and that, in Dean’s opinion, is all a kitchen ever needs. “Thought you might be hungry.”

Dean is. He also needs a shower. Sam, he notices, is not. He’s clean shaven and his hair is clean too, but it’s not damp anymore, so he must have been awake for a while.

Unusual that Dean managed to sleep through that. Unusual and a little unsettling.

“How long was I asleep?” he asks, stretching until his joints make popping noises. Man, he’s getting old, there’s no denying it. Thirty-three going on sixty. Not much longer and he’ll need reading glasses.

Sam chuckles softly; it’s the most damn beautiful sound Dean’s heard in forever. “Half a day? Maybe longer. Not sure. When did you fall asleep?”

“Pretty much the same time as you.” Dean looks at his brother who right now comes over with a steaming and very welcomed cup of coffee. Sam looks a lot better than he has in a while, even though the shadows around his eyes are still prominent. In any case, the sleep definitely did him good.

“That doesn’t help much since I have no idea when I fell asleep,” Sam informs him.

He probably doesn’t, having been pretty out of it for a long time. At least his fever seems to be gone. “How long have you been awake?” Dean asks around another yawn.

“A couple of hours. Not sure.”

“You should have woken me.”

“What for? You needed sleep. Obviously.”

Half a day. Wow. Dean must really be getting old. Although, he’s kind of lost track of time before, so he doesn’t know exactly how long he’s been awake.

He takes the coffee Sam hands him and finds it very hot and very strong. Just as Sam likes it lately, drinking coffee not for the sake of drinking coffee but for the sake of creating a new record on staying awake.

Sam also has a cup. Dean isn’t at all surprised.

“You mentioned breakfast?” he recalls.

“Got bread and butter, some cheese and bacon. Nothing fancy, but better than having you eat burgers four times a day.” There’s a spark in Sam’s eyes as he speaks, and Dean is so damn happy to see it that he very nearly misses the implication of the food he can see sitting beside the microwave.

“Hold on a sec,” he says. “Where did you get that?”

Sam frowns a little, as if not seeing the problem. “From the supermarket around the corner. Why?”

“Why?” Dean repeats. “Are you kidding me? You fucking went out without telling me?” All of his good mood is suddenly gone. “You _went out_?”

“I’m twenty-nine years old,” Sam reminds him. (It’s not quite true; he’ll be twenty-eight for another few days.) “I have been capable of going to the store on my own for longer than I care to remember.”

“Two days ago you didn’t even remember your own name!” Dean yells with the fury of the truly terrified. “Anything could have happened to you, and I wouldn’t even have known!” He jumps up so he can tower over his brother, but Sam stands as well and towers, as always, over Dean. “You don’t go out without telling me,” Dean growls.

“I’m not a fucking child!” Sam snaps back, anger and hurt written in bold letters all over his face. “And you’re not my mother!”

“No, I’m your fucking brother, and you’re really pissing me off! What the hell were you thinking?”

“What the hell are _you_ thinking?” Sam shouts back. “I was just going to the store, you asshole!”

“Right. Just to the store. And it doesn’t matter one bit if you’re in the store or in France if you have a seizure, or you space out and someone takes you away and I have no idea where you are or what happened to you!”

“I fine!” Sam insists. “I can tell when it’s bad, and now it isn’t. Are you trying to tell me that I’m not allowed to go anywhere without your permission anymore?”

“You’re not going anywhere without _me_ ,” Dean informs him. “Even if I know where you are, by the time I notice something is wrong and get there it can be too late.” He feels like punching Sam for being an idiot who wants to kill him with worry. “Right now, I’m considering locking you in here and not letting you go anywhere at all!”

“What, you need to control every last aspect of my life now?” Sam takes a step closer, shoves Dean hard enough to make him stumble backwards. “One would think you’d be glad to finally be rid of me!”

His words make Dean go from pissed to really, really pissed. “How can you say that?” he hisses, and damn, there are actually tears in his eyes as he shoves Sam right back, shoves him hard enough to hit the wall, illness and injuries momentarily forgotten. Dean keeps his brother pinned against the wall, presses him there with his body, their faces mere inches apart. “How can you fucking say that?” he yells. “Everything, _everything_ I do is because I don’t want to lose you. And you can’t seem to leave soon enough!”

And before Sam can say anything in return, Dean leans in even further and presses his lips to his brother’s. Sam’s mouth is half-open in shock and entirely unresponsive, and Dean makes use of the opportunity by slipping his tongue between his brother’s lips. Or rather, his tongue makes use of the opportunity, because Dean has nothing to do with this. He’s just as shocked as Sam is, and as soon as his brain catches up with what is happening, he lets go and stumbles a few steps back. The distance allows him a great view of Sam’s pale face and wide eyes.

“Fuck,” Dean says, turns on his heels and walks out of the room.

Although, running might be the better word for it. Outside, the chilly wind hits him like a fist to the face. It’s nearly May, but the weather stubbornly refuses to get warmer. The ground is muddy and it smells like rain. Dean keeps running, even picks up speed. He has no idea why he did that.

Less than a minute later, he realises that he just left his sick and unstable little brother alone in the motel, after a heated argument about why Sam should never be without him. With a curse, Dean turns and runs back there. Upon arrival, he opens the door and finds Sam sitting on the bed, looking more than a little lost.

Dean walks in as quickly as he walked out. “That never happened,” he declares before flopping down on the couch. “Do we have coffee left?”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam seems to be more than okay with that kiss never having happened, and Dean spends the next two days being very happy about that and not at all secretly disappointed or anything silly and girly like that. He’s decided to stay in this motel until Sam’s fever is completely gone or the credit card runs out – whatever happens first.

Sam keeps insisting that he’s fine, and compared to the last few days he’s frigging awesome. But he keeps being jumpy; he keeps looking behind him, tries to spend as much time as possible outside and doesn’t go near the impala. ‘ _Fine my ass’_ , Dean thinks as he rummages through his duffle, all the time watching Sammy out of the corner of his eye.

It may be because of his divided attention that the one clean shirt he knows has to be here somewhere eludes him, but even when he concentrates on the task and nearly crawls into the duffle, he only finds dirty laundry. With a frustrated sigh he gives up, checks under the cover of the bed, then under the bed. He keeps losing things lately, and it’s getting annoying.

Eventually, his gaze falls onto the closet. They never use the closets unless they are staying somewhere for weeks, but who knows? Maybe he sleepwalked and put his clothes inside. It’s at least as likely as the shirt vanishing into thin air.

Well, maybe slightly less likely. But he checks anyway, just so he can later claim to have looked everywhere.

The shirt isn’t inside, which is a relief because it means he doesn’t sleepwalk. Instead, a yellow square grins up at Dean.

Dean frowns at it, mostly in surprise. He leans down and picks it up to hold it for Sam to see.

“Hey, look at this!” he calls, because Sam’s sitting on the couch with his back to Dean and the stuffed doll.

When Sam grants them his attention, he frowns as well. “Stuffed cheese?” he guesses.

“Dude.” Sometimes Dean can’t believe his brother. “That’s SpongeBob Squarepants. He lives in a pineapple under the sea.”

“I don’t even want to know how you know that.”

“Motel room television only offers so much variety on those long, boring afternoons when you’re in the library.”

Sam sits up a little straighter, winching softly when he moves wrong and then probably instantly forgetting about it – pain is such a constant in their lives. “I thought you spend those days watching porn.”

“Even porn gets old. And you have to pay for it.”

Sam looks at Dean and then at the stuffed doll with all the drawn-on holes.

Dean scowls. “Dude…”

“Where’d you find that?” Sam hurries to ask.

“In the closet. Someone before us must have forgotten it here.” Dean throws the doll into the air and catches it again. “I always knew no one really bothers to clean these rooms.”

Sam grins at him. “You wanna keep it? It might be able to keep you company when I’m at the library.”

Dean contemplates throwing the thing at him, and nearly does so. It’s such a natural reaction. But the doll is unusually heavy, as if it were filled with sand, and Sam’s still sore enough that it would be bad if Dean actually hit him. So he just says, “Hell, no!” and puts it back where he found it.

However, SpongeBob reminded him that the TV still exists and he flops down in front of it, trying to lose himself in mindless entertainment. But Sam remains restless and slightly nervous. It has to be exhausting, being so jumpy, so tense all the goddamn time, Dean thinks. And yes, Sam looks tired, but then, he always has, for months.

“I’m going outside,” Sam eventually says, his tone slightly challenging, as if daring Dean to stop him. He’s already standing, walking over to the door with barely a limp left to his steps, even though he didn’t do his ankle and other injuries a favour with all his struggling a few days ago.

Dean looks  at the window. The curtain is closed, but he can still tell that the sun is bright and there’s probably not a cloud in the sky. Not a day to sit inside all the time, he has to admit.

“Don’t forget your jacket,” he reminds his brother, who throws him an annoyed glare and leaves his jacket on purpose.

When Dean follows him outside, he discovers that it isn’t as cold as he expected. It’s actually quite warm. Well, it _is_ nearly May, after all.

Sam’s birthday will be in a few days, Dean suddenly realises. He will be twenty-nine then, and maybe he won’t live to be thirty.

The knowledge that actually Sam shouldn’t even have lived to be twenty-four holds little comfort. From one moment to the next, Dean feels the desperation he never has time for threatening to crash down on him.

He looks at his brother, with the sun in his hair and too big clothes hanging off his frame, and has no illusions.

As if sensing that this is the worst possible moment, Sam turns around and the slight smile on his face disappears the moment he looks into Dean’s face.

“Dean?” he asks. “Are you okay?” He reaches for his brother, concern all over his face. “You don’t look so good all of a sudden.”

 _‘I’m fine. I just don’t want to lose you.’_ Dean doesn’t say it, of course, nor does he mention that having Sam look at him with those wide eyes, all worried about _him_ because he’s Sam and senses when Dean is miserable but not _why_ makes him feel even worse.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I think it’s withdrawal. Too little beer in too many days.”

Sam looks doubtful. “Look, if you’re not feeling well, we could always…”

“Fresh air has never harmed anyone,” Dean cuts him off. “Nor has beer. I’ll get some from the trunk and then we’ll find someplace nice to drink it.”

Sam gives him a mix of a grimace and a smile. Neither is able to cover the concern and uncertainty still in his eyes. He stays closer to Dean than he normally does as they walk down the path towards the near forest, close enough to touch, and Dean thinks, _‘I love you so much I think it’s killing me.’_

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Things are gong well for a while, except that Dean’s shirt never shows up again, and what’s worse, a day later one his shoes disappears. He left both standing by the bed where he pushed them off his feet, and the next morning one is gone. He blames Sam at first, thinking this is another stupid prank, but Sam insists it wasn’t him. He gets honestly upset when Dean starts yelling at him because they want to leave and he can’t go outside because he’s missing a fucking shoe, and Dean’s reminded that Sam can’t handle Dean being angry at him right now – and that he never starts their prank wars anyways. Sam even helps him look everywhere, eventually getting angry himself, and in the end Dean has to hop over to the car one-shoed and buy a new pair in the town.

It pisses him off. Getting shoes to fit around your feet just right takes time and they prefer to wear theirs until they fall apart.

The mystery of the missing shoe is never solved, and that bothers Dean a lot. Shoes don’t randomly disappear, and that someone broke in, found them both sleeping and decided to take a shoe as a souvenir is so ridiculous it hurts. Also, Dean is a light sleeper lately, often woken by Sam’s nightmares, if Sam sleeps at all.

If he didn’t know better, Dean would say the motel room is haunted. But all salt lines and protective wards are intact, and if this place is haunted, then so was Bobby’s place, where Sam managed to lose two magazines for his Taurus and a book of Bobby’s he had kept on his nightstand.

It was around that time he got so bad Dean decided to leave the place.

Now they leave the motel in favour of another one because Sam found something that looks like a case in the newspaper, just three towns over, and Dean deems him well enough to take it. A simple haunting, by the look of it. Sammy, Dean decides, can do all the research he wants and Dean will take care of the salting and burning and the pissed ghost that might interrupt that activity. In anticipation of Sam being a bitch about that plan he never tells him he’s going alone, intending to wait until Sam is asleep, or else just sneak out under the pretence of grabbing something to eat.

It is a brilliant plan. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Until Sam accompanies Dean to an interview with one of the victims of their presumed ghost, who has gotten over the attack that had nearly cost him his eyes and is working in his garden when the brothers arrive. He greets them briefly, even offers them coffee, but is clearly annoyed by yet another team of journalists interested in his story. He answers their questions, but won’t let them keep him from his work. He’s shredding cut branches in the back garden, and Dean and Sam’s voices have to fight against the noise of the small machine to be heard.

Or rather, Dean’s has. Sam hasn’t said a word since they got into the garden, and it takes Dean far, far too long to notice his silence and see what’s going on.

In the end he doesn’t even realise it himself. It’s Danny, the witness, who brings it to his attention. His eyes are focused on something just behind Dean all of a sudden, and Dean feels his stomach clench even before Danny asks with rough concern that reminds Dean of Bobby, “Hey, somethin’ wrong with your partner?”

Dean turns around, and there’s Sam, a few steps behind him, his face pale and his eyes fixed on the shredding machine. One after the other the branches go in and meet the blades inside, leaving the machine as little shreds of something once whole. Over the motor noise they hear the sounds of the branches, breaking to pieces with dry cracking, like bones.

Oh fuck, fuck. Dean doesn’t need a second to realise what his brother is seeing. He doesn’t bother with an apology to Danny, just grabs Sam’s shoulders (hard, tense, too thin under his hands) and steers him away. Around the house and towards the car, and Sam follows without resistance but keeps staring straight ahead at something Dean is happy he can’t see.

Ten metres from the car he starts to tremble. Five metres to the car he falls to his knees and starts heaving, vomiting bile and his meagre breakfast onto the sidewalk. Dean keeps dragging him on as soon as he stops, tears of desperation and helplessness unacknowledged in his eyes, just knowing that he has to get Sam away from here and that getting away for Sam is not a possibility.

They don’t even make it to the car. In fact, Sam never even makes it back to his feet and then Dean’s greatest fear comes true and his brother’s convulsing, eyes wide and unseeing as another seizure takes hold of him, far too soon after the last one. Danny, who followed them around the house, watches worried and confused, before stuttering something about an ambulance and running for the house.

“No,” Dean yells, or maybe he whispers it. He can only hope his own pain isn’t reflected in his voice as he holds his brother down to keep him from hurting himself and tells that stranger that this is normal, it’ll pass, Sammy only needs his medication and he’ll be fine. Epilepsy, he says, not even knowing if the symptoms really fit, but if they don’t, Danny doesn’t know any better. He’s okay with the explanation, and sticks around trying to be helpful. Any other day, Dean would appreciate it, but now he just wants this guy to be gone and Sam’s seizure to end.

It doesn’t end for a very long time.

After what feels like forever, Dean finally gets to gather his unresponsive brother in his arms and carry him the last steps to the car, Danny proving truly helpful after all when he opens the door so Dean can place Sam on the backseat.

“You sure he’s alright?” Danny asks, impressively concerned for a guy who nearly had his own eyes clawed out by a ghost not a week ago, and Dean nods.

“He’ll wake up in an hour,” he assures the man and feels like crying.

Sam doesn’t wake up in an hour. He doesn’t wake up in five. Dean lays him on his bed in the motel and waits for five hours and then ten, refusing to call Bobby over this because he knows now to give it time. Sam might take longer than ever but he can still snap out of it, so there’s no reason to worry Bobby, really. And all the time fearing that this time Sam won’t, this time this is it.

Always thinking _‘what if?’_

At one point he looks up and out the window and realises that night has fallen. They went to Danny’s place before noon. A part of Dean is surprised. Another part of him wonders if this is the first night since Sam left him, or the fourth. It seems impossible that time should pass so slowly.

Dean doesn’t sleep. At midnight, Sam hasn’t woken up, and he hasn’t woken up at one AM either. Around two, Dean looks at the ceiling and says, “Cas,” but he doesn’t go on. Castiel is busy with his war. Or dead. Either way, he won’t help them.

No one will help them. They are all alone, and that used to be enough, used to be all Dean wanted, but not anymore. Not when he can’t save Sammy on his own.

The following evening, the ghost they came to hunt kills another man. But Sam woke up in the afternoon and Dean doesn’t care.

He hands the case over to Bobby one day later, dopes Sam up on the best pills Dean ever had the pleasure of using and bundles him into the car. They’re halfway to Minnesota, with Sam curled up on the backseat and lost in feverish nightmares, when Dean realises two days too late that he missed Sam’s birthday.


	6. Chapter 5

Pastor Jim used to own a little house near his church when he was alive. He officially left it to Bobby, but Bobby has never been there since his old friend’s death. He didn’t exactly give Dean and Sam a key either, but he told them what kind of traps to expect, which counts as an invitation to stay there whenever they feel the need to get away for a while.

And with talents like theirs, keys are overrated anyway. Even though Dean has to admit the old pastor’s locks are a bit more tricky than most.

The house and garden look harmless and plain on the outside – much like the man himself. With Sam mostly out of it and prone to incoherent panic attacks caused by nightmares, Dean’s more than glad that he has been here before and knows what to look for.

They have spent some time at this house when they were kids – every now and then, when their father knew beforehand that a case would force him to leave his sons alone for weeks rather than days, and once or twice when one of them got hurt or they needed a place to lay low for a few days.

The last time they’ve been here while Jim was still alive, Dean was seventeen and concussed, and his right leg was broken in three places after a poltergeist hunt went a little more downhill than usual – or in this case, downstairs. He has vague memories of Sam and dad having a fight by his bedside, hissing at each other with lowered voices because yelling wouldn’t have done anything for Dean’s headache. He remembers Sam holding his hand and Jim’s calming presence through it all. But all in all the memory is hazy and nearly completely lost in ineffective painkillers and confusion.

What he remembers much better is the time before that. Dean was twelve and it was the last time dad had left them with someone to watch over them. He remembers Sammy’s little hand in his, just before his brother decided that knowing about monsters somehow made him too old to hold on to Dean’s hand anymore. Remembers Sammy’s questions and Jim’s patient answers, and he can hear his own voice begging Jim not to tell their dad that Sam found out about the things in the shadows, because he feared that as soon as John knew, Sam’s childhood would irreversibly be over.

He was right about that, as it turned out.

As he disables the traps in the living room, Dean remembers his father’s car pulling to the side of the road before the impala, about the grief and rage on John’s face when he told them that Jim had been killed. What remains is this empty house and a lot of stories they can’t tell to anyone.

Even dad is gone now.

The house is quiet, the shadows of the evening quickly spreading from the corners. It’s filled with the chill of rooms that were empty for too long and smells every so slightly of dust. Sam will have a field day cleaning up once he’s back to himself.

For now, Dean settles his brother on the couch and lets him sleep, knowing he will be better when he wakes up. (There is no other possibility. Dean isn’t ready yet.)

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam wakes up shivering and aching in the washed out light of the very early morning when the sky has only just begun to brighten. The quiet around him is interrupted only by sound of Dean’s deep breaths.

Sam knows it’s Dean before he sees him slumped on the sofa. His brother looks peaceful, but Sam knows him well enough to see the little signs; the occasional twitch, the barely perceptible hitch in his breathing. Dean’s sleep is anything but peaceful.

But it hasn’t reached critical levels yet. Sam’s not yet beyond knowing that their lives took a turn for the worst somewhere if they are rating their nightmares by degrees to determine if it’s worth it yet to wake their respective brother from his much needed sleep.

He’d rather not. Dean’s pushing himself beyond the point of exhaustion and needs every break he can get. With a start Sam realises that he doesn’t even know what day it is. He knows he has lost time somewhere, but the feeling is too empty to hold anything for him to learn.

Strangely enough, Sam woke up recognizing at once where he was, which is odd considering he hasn’t seen the place in (centuries) years. In the quiet of the room, he sits on the couch and enjoys the fleeting moment of feeling okay.

Nothing much has changed here since Jim Murphy died. The pastor didn’t have any family left, and if any other of his old friends stayed in this house in recent years, they left his personal stuff untouched.

The little house almost feels like a shrine.

Not that Jim had much stuff to begin with. The place is not exactly Spartan, but it’s not luxurious either. It suited Jim, Sam thinks – especially the fact that his most valuable possessions were in the hidden weapons arsenal in the basement.

There are a few framed pictures on the mantelpiece. In the dark, Sam can’t make them out, but he knows what they show: A photo of Jim, Bobby, Caleb and their dad, shouldering rifles and smiling into the camera as if they were out to hunt deer. An old photo of a little girl Sam doesn’t know and never asked about. A picture of Jim with little Sam on his lab while Dean was making silly poses before them.

Then, sudden and unbidden, Sam is overcome by a flash of memory: Meg, the bitch who murdered Jim, in her last host body, and Castiel showing his tongue down her throat, saying something about the pizza man. The image fades as quickly as it came, leaving Sam with a vague memory of watching that and feeling nothing.

Dean whimpers. The sound is so quiet no one else would have heard it, but Sam is tuned in to sensing his brother’s distress. He shoves everything else aside as he sits on the arm of the sofa and gently touches his brother’s forehead.

Waking Dean is not necessary in the end. He calms down at Sam’s touch and Sam remains sitting beside him until the sun rises, offering what little comfort he can, letting him sleep.

Eventually, he gets up, leaving Dean asleep on the couch – peacefully, this time. Being as quiet as possibly, Sam makes his way to the bathroom. There is a noise from the living room the moment he opens the door, and because Sam turns to look at it, he only sees the figure standing right behind the bathroom door out of the corner of his eye.

His heart leaps, then stops. He stares into the bathroom and it is as empty as it should be.

It’s too early for another panic attack, damn it! Sam keeps from freaking out by pure willpower alone. He knows there’s nothing there. He can see the room is empty, no matter how much his instincts tell him to run. There’s nothing here – there _can’t_ be anything here because if Bobby’s house is a fort, this one is a freaking fortress. Jim Murphy was nothing if not thorough.

Sam can’t bother Dean with another fit so soon after the last one – and maybe, if he manages to remember that this is merely him going crazy, he can keep from going over the edge that little bit longer. So he sucks it up, fights down his fear and steps into the bathroom, where nothing waits for him but the cold tiles under his feet.

Standing in front of the mirror, Sam stares at his reflection for a long time without really seeing it. The house doesn’t have power, but the morning light falling though the small window is sufficient by now for him to make out the deep lines around his mouth and eyes that make him look older than he is.

They can never make him look as old as he feels.

His reflection stares back – judgingly it seems, or at the very least contemplating. Sam looks away first, turns on the water and bends down to wash his face. The water is icy on his hot skin, but he wouldn’t want it any other way.

He remains standing there, pushed up on the sink with water running down his face and dripping from his hair for minutes before he speaks:

“Cas,” he says, his voice little more than a rough whisper. “I know you’re busy with your war. I don’t expect you to come or anything, but I hope you hear this. It’s just…” He takes a deep breath. It’s shaky, but breathing’s still easier than finding the right words. “I’m not gonna make it much longer, and Dean… well, Dean’s not doing so well. This is… His nightmares are back, Cas. And he’s, he’s not taking care of himself. And when I’m gone. You know. It would be okay if I was really gone, you know? Well, not okay, but better. He could let go and move on. But I’m not going to die, and I don’t think Dean will be able to… I fear he’s gonna be stuck with me, even though it won’t even _matter_ anymore. So, I wanted to ask you to kill me, when the time comes.” It’s almost funny how easy it is to say _that_. “So Dean won’t feel responsible for me any longer. And maybe, if you could…” No, that’s bullshit. Dean has done so much for Cas and the rest of the world, and Sam shouldn’t have to beg. He can _demand_ this on his brother’s behalf, and he does. “I want you to look after him,” he says, his voice stronger than before. “I know my brother – this’ll be hard for him. He needs someone to be there for him, and you owe him that much.”

Sam’s hair is still dripping water when he lifts his head again and his eyes fall onto the mirror, where his reflection’s hair is still dry. His reflection looks back at him with a small smile on his face and says, “Hi, Sam.”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Whatever it was Dean dreamt about, it’s forgotten the moment a loud crash wakes him from his sleep. He’s on his feet and running toward the noise before he even has a chance to orient himself; his hand feeling for his weapon as life-long instincts take over.

He’s out of the living room by the time he remembers where he is. Having no idea where the crash came from, Dean looks into the kitchen first before he finds Sam on the floor of the small bathroom amidst the shards of the broken mirror. He’s shaking badly, and cutting his hands to shreds while playing around with the shards.

Dean has no idea what he’s doing there, but he doesn’t feel like watching to find out.

He doesn’t even try to talk to Sam as he crouches down and takes hold of his hands. They are slippery with blood, but Sam doesn’t fight him. Instead, he looks at Dean, and Dean is more than a little surprised to find him actually aware and calmer than he expected.

“I don’t care what you say,” Sam tells him, his words sounding agitated but coherent. “This place is fucking haunted!”

“It’s not,” Dean says. He stands and tries to pull Sam up with him, but Sam refuses to move. “It can’t be. Jim would turn in his grave if it was and come back to personally kick any ghost that dared to enter his sanctuary. Bobby’s panic room isn’t better protected than this house.”

“No.” Sam shakes his head and goes back to what he was doing. “I don’t know how. But something’s here. It _has_ to be!”

Dean recognizes the desperation in his brother’s voice. Something has to be wrong with this place, because if there isn’t, it would mean that everything is wrong with Sam.

Usually, Sam is more rational than this, never jumping to conclusions just because they are more comfortable than the obvious. This, more than anything, tells Dean just how _scared_ his littlebrother is.

“Okay,” he says, a little helplessly. What is he supposed to say? ‘Nope, sorry, you’re just bat shit crazy’? Not going to happen. “I’ll check it out. But only after I look at your hands.”

Sam places his latest shard back on the ground and stands. Dean, who expected a fight, is quite surprised by his easy surrender but doesn’t complain about it. Sam even follows him to the kitchen willingly and sits still as Dean takes care of the cuts all over his palm and fingers. When Dean disinfects the cuts with alcohol, he doesn’t even twitch. He doesn’t react at all, as if he drifted off again, but Dean’s worry proves unnecessary. Once he is done, Sam comes back to life as if someone had put him in standby mode for a moment. He looks at the floor where a trail of blood is splattered on the tiles and says, “I should clean this up.”

“Jim won’t mind,” Dean assures him, but Sam ignores him and makes for the kitchen sink.

Even though it makes him slightly uneasy, Dean lets him go and even out of his sight for a few minutes as he returns to the bathroom to clean up the broken glass all over the floor. The shards are lying as they left them, with drying blood all over them. Dean sighs as he crouches down and begins to carefully collect the shards and throw them into a bag he brought from the kitchen.

Just before he picks up the first piece he suddenly realises what it was that Sam did here: every single shard is turned over so the reflecting side is facing the floor. It explains why Sam gave in so easily before: he was simply done here.

About Sam’s motivation, Dean can only speculate. He picks up one of the larger shards and turns it over, but all he sees is his own reflection, looking back at him through a smear of his brother’s blood.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The thing is, Sam is pretty sure he isn’t actually going crazy. Not as crazy as he seems to go, anyway, and that’s where things get complicated. Insanity has been knocking on his door for quite some time now, and Sam knows that, which means he also knows he’s not the best person to objectively judge his mental state. But through all that, he _knows_ he is losing it – afterwards. When he drifts off and everything disappears in a haze of agony, when he looks at his brother and sees his eyes run out of their sockets while around him the room is on fire, when Lucifer whispers in his ear in a form of Enochian Sam wouldn’t be able to explain even to Castiel but understands perfectly anyway, he doesn’t know anything except that he’s in hell and always will be.

But when it’s over these episodes leave him with empty despair and the painful knowledge that he’s going mad. He can look back and say, “At that moment, I was crazy.” And then there are the times when madness and clarity overlap, like he’s living in one reality but seeing another, and he can _feel_ everything slip away from him, tries to hold on but isn’t sure what he’s holding on to. All those things leave him with a strong sense of wrongness.

He doesn’t have that now. He remembers the living mirror image, the things he saw out of the corner of his eyes, and even hours and days later they still seem as real to him as Dean walking into the room, drinking coffee, or pinning him against the wall and kissing him on the lips.

That kiss did nothing to keep Sam’s world stable – nor does Dean’s new habit of stroking Sam’s hair and caressing his face at night, when maybe he thinks Sam is still asleep. Sam doesn’t know what to make of that, or if he really wants Dean to stop, just like he doesn’t know if he really wants Dean to never kiss him again.

Sam will never let Dean know how confusing that was, is, how it makes telling what’s real that little bit more difficult. (He thinks, sometimes, if Dean would just go one step further and not take it back Sam could hold on to him and everything around them would make sense). He knows it was real, but the thing he saw in Jim’s bathroom feels just as real, if not more. (Because he lives in a world where independent reflections are more believable than his brother kissing him.)

It seems perfectly real to him, and that’s freaking him out more than anything else. His hold on reality is precarious at the best of times and this one moment is constantly threatening to destroy it – but what’s killing him is the fact that he could always tell what was real in the end, and now he can’t. Because he knows what he sees, hears, feels is impossible. Dean is right. This place is protected, as is Bobby’s house and the impala. And yet he knows something’s here – worse, he can sense its presence, its malevolence and silent focus. But it _can’t_ be here, and Sam just can’t tell anymore. And it’s scaring him, more than he thought possible.

Sam never thought anyone could hope to be haunted this much.

It’s an irrational thing to hope for. That, at least, is kind of fitting.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

After checking over Jim’s protections and adding their own, there simply is no way this house could be haunted. Sam tries to accept that, but all his senses tell him otherwise. He fights with Dean about it, once, since Dean won’t admit that clearly he feels it too. Sam sees him rubbing his arms every so often, as if he were beginning to feel the chill that has accompanied Sam for weeks. He’s seen him look in the direction of sounds Sam thought only he could hear – the scratching, the footsteps down the empty hallway. “There’s nothing,” Dean grumbled afterwards, but he looked before Sam did. And Dean, like him, keeps losing or misplacing things. When his car keys show up in one of the kitchen cabinets, he’s pissed at Sam for the rest of the day. When Sam finds his favourite knife in the wet grass of the backyard, he doesn’t even bother mentioning it to Dean.

But a haunting is impossible, as Dean insists when Sam decides that the house isn’t safe enough to stay in. He can see the signs but it’s impossible and therefore it can’t be. And in the end Sam has to accept that. After all, he’s half crazy, and maybe he did misplace the keys or the knife while he was wandering though the house looking for the bones of his left hand that must have been forgotten the last time he was put back together. Maybe the house is just old, making noises as it settles. It’s all more plausible that a ghost getting anywhere near here.

And Dean being cold can be caused by Dean being exhausted – exhausted because he had to sacrifice too much sleep lately in order to look out for his useless little brother. Sam watched the rings under his eyes get darker every day for weeks now, and it’s because of them that he gives in without too much of a fight. Wherever they go, what is after them will follow. They might as well stay and give Dean a chance to rest.

So Sam shuts up about the things he sees and stays awake at night, watching over his brother to protect him from whatever might come to harm them.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Dean has never been in Jim’s attic before, but he knows there has to be something valuable up there – simply because he was nearly killed by at least three traps, two of which would have ended his life if they’d gotten him even though he’s human and far from undead. The last trap actually did get him, and the only reason this one didn’t kill him is because he’s not a vampire.

For a gentle old pastor, Jim had surprisingly violent hobbies.

Dean hopes the traps were more than just a hobby, though, because after all the trouble, he’d be disappointed to learn that his old friend only booby trapped the ladder for practice – even though he only fights his way to the attic out of boredom. Whatever the traps might be hiding, he doubts it would help him save Sam, and that’s all he’s interested in.

Funny how your perspective changes when you get older.

Once he proved himself worthy of accessing the attic, Dean finds it dusty, but surprisingly tidy. Sam would like it – neat enough not to be appalling to his OCD, yet chaotic enough for him to have something to obsess over.

Most of the chaos can be found inside the numerous cardboard boxes piled up under the lowered ceiling, which means this is portable chaos. Dean grins. Now he only needs to find something interesting for Sammy to play with.

Most of the boxes contain ceramic, some have old dishes inside, and some – Dean didn’t quite expect it – contain what looks like old dolls and other toys. He wonders about those. Maybe things of the town’s children that Jim kept for some reason.

A few contain papers and books. Those will be of most interest for Sam, and who knows – he might actually find something good inside. Unlike Dean, his little brother has the patience and attention span to actually read stuff, even if he’s not looking for something in particular.

Also, there’s little risk of Sam doing anything worse than cutting his finger on a stack of papers.

Dean picks one of the paper-boxes and two of the much less heavy toy boxes and carefully carries them downstairs. The chances of finding what Jim tried to protect with the booby traps inside the ones he picked are slim, but he’ll have a few more days to go through the rest of them, if things go as planned.

Sam was reading a book when Dean started his exploration. He still is, but Dean isn’t sure his brother finished even one page in all the time he was gone. When Sam isn’t staring out of the window at the grey sky with an expression as if he was watching a particularly depressing movie, he’s staring at the pages with the same expression. The staring is only interrupted by blinking – or rather, closing his eyes just that little bit too long to count as blinking.

The kid is beat. Dean would have crushed his pills and mixed them in Sam’s coffee again, but the last time he did that Sam had what seemed like the worst nightmare ever and Dean _could not wake him up_.

Better to wait until he falls over. At least then Dean can shake him out of it if he has to.

Maybe he’s lucky and the papers he found are just boring enough to put Sammy to sleep.

For now they only serve to pull Sam back to the present as Dean sets the box down beside the couch with a heavy thud.

“What’s that?” Sam asks. He’s pale, the shadows around his eyes far, far too deep. When he reaches to open the upper box, Dean notices his hand shaking.

“Found it in the attic. The attic nearly killed me for my effort. As long as you don’t have anything better to do – you know, like sleeping or eating – you can help me sort through them, see what’s so important.”

Sam’s already taken the first bunch of papers – old formulas and pages of newspapers by the look of it – and leafs through them. He looks actually more awake than before, so that plan was a failure, but Dean didn’t expect him to fall asleep upon contact anyway, so he leaves his brother to his reading and starts to inspect the first toy box.

There are all kinds of stuff inside: Stuffed toys, Legos, even a remote controlled car, though (sadly) the remote is missing. Dean looks for it in the second box and finds something else instead.

“Hello,” he says with an expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “Look at you, all yellow and ugly.”

Sam looks over and grinmaces as well. “I didn’t know you liked that so much you had to keep it.”

“You know me – can’t resist a beautiful body,” Dean jokes as he turns the SpongeBob doll over. “And apparently neither could Jim.” The rest of the toys he found are quite old, the colours paled or clipped off. This yellow insult to the eyes seems incredibly out of place.

Though not really any more than the other playthings that are in the home of a ghost-hunting pastor.

“Or the dust,” Sam adds, and sneezes. He’s right – like everything else, the toy is pretty dusty. And like the one Dean found in the motel room, it’s heavy. He wonders if SpongeBob ate the remote control he’s looking for.

As it turns out, he didn’t. Dean finds it just below the stuffed doll and everything else is forgotten as he spends the rest of the afternoon trying to get the car to work again.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Two days later, Dean comes to the conclusion that they are haunted after all. They are haunted by a fugly, painfully yellow square with a long nose that lives in a pineapple under the sea.

It sits on the windowsill, and stares at him with its unblinking, idiotically long-lashed eyes, half hidden by the curtain. The kid of Sam’s roommate must have left it there, and Dean wants to drag the brat back here and dangle her out of the window while yelling at her not to leave her stuff lying around. He’s pretty sure the girl would never forget anything ever again after that.

He’d also get banned from the hospital forever, and that’s not worth it for the brief relief of finding an outlet for his frustration. Even though he wishes his dad had dangled him out of a window, or off a cliff, or over a sea of lava when he was a kid, and yelled at him to never leave _his_ stuff lying around. Most of all, to make sure he always knows where his cell phone is.

But they didn’t have cell phones when he was that age so his dad is excused.

Dean is not.

When Sam became more and more lethargic, Dean thought it was only the lack of sleep. When Sam collapsed he thought it was another seizure. But Sam didn’t seize, he just lay there and didn’t move anymore. Which was better than seizing, so Dean was feeling relief, actually – after he checked if his brother was still breathing.

He blamed the collapse on exhaustion, too, and while he wasn’t happy about it, Dean was sure all his brother needed was sleep and more sleep; maybe without nightmares for once.

Sam didn’t dream, which is unusual these days. He didn’t wake up, no matter what Dean tried. Eventually, Dean panicked and was willing to call an ambulance – but he couldn’t because his fucking cell phone was nowhere to be found.

He was so sure it was in his pocket where he always keeps it. But it wasn’t there, and he should have checked because it must have fallen out, but he didn’t check and Sam didn’t wake up and was breathing too flatly and was too pale, and in the end Dean broke at least seven speed limits while driving him to the hospital and carried him to the ER himself.

Sam’s so tall – Dean’s not supposed to be able to carry him that far. It’s not supposed to be so _easy_.

The medical personnel took Sam away from him then, and it wasn’t until what felt like years later that someone told him he got it all wrong, or at least missed something vital in the equation. Now Sam’s stuck in a hospital room again and it looks like this time, Dean can’t take him out after one night. If the glare the doctor threw him is anything to go by, the man doesn’t want him to take Sammy anywhere ever again, since obviously, Dean is unable to take care of his brother.

This is going to be difficult.

If Dean’s perfectly honest, he never really imagined how it would happen when Sam… left him, because he never wanted to think about it. But he finds now that somehow, he expected it to be quick, happen suddenly: one moment Sam’s fine, then the wall crumbles and he’s gone. Dean never expected it to be so slow and painful and messy.

“Cas,” he mutters. He keeps his voice barely audible, in case someone walks in or Sam or the guy in the other bed aren’t as deeply asleep as he thinks. It’s not like Cas would hear him any better if he shouted. “I don’t know if you can hear me.” He really doesn’t. Castiel has been silent for too long. He’s fighting a war. Maybe he really is dead or has been captured. The thought makes Dean sick, and he doesn’t have the strength to worry about his friend as well, so most of the time he just pushes the thought aside and decides that Cas is just too busy with his own interests to help the guys who sacrificed so much in order to stop the stupid apocalypse. It’s easier to be angry.

But today Dean is too tired even for anger. “I hope you can,” he continues. “I really… I really need your help. Sam needs your help. We’re in a hospital again. He just collapsed, and he hasn’t been sleeping well – or at all – in ages, so I thought… But the doctor said it’s starvation. On top of everything else.” Dean takes a deep breath and reaches out to take his brother’s limp, thin hand in his own. He’s looking up and sees only the ceiling of the room. “He’s fucking starving, Cas, and I didn’t even notice. I made him eat every day, and it wasn’t much, but he shouldn’t be… He must have flushed it down the toilet when I wasn’t looking or something. I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.” He didn’t notice. SpongeBob is staring at him with that disgusting grin on his face as he takes a shaking breath. “Doc says there’s no physical cause for it. Thinks Sam’s anorexic or something like that. They want to send him to a clinic when he’s better, and, well. That’s not going to help, you know? He just can’t eat anything because it all tastes like blood, or shit, and all the other crap they force down your throat when you’re in hell. I get it. And I don’t blame him, but I can’t help him! But you… Maybe you can. I mean, you could at least try! If you can’t fix his mind, at least… I don’t know, make him not so thin anymore. He’s sick because he’s so weak, and I _know_ you can heal that!” It’s time to let go of Sam’s hand, else he might crush it. Dean gets up and starts to pace instead. “Please, Cas! It’s Sam! Your friend, remember? The guy who’s like this because he had to do what you angels couldn’t and kick back the devil your buddies were so keen on letting out of his cage? Damn it, you fucking owe him that much!”

It takes all Dean’s self-control not to scream the last words. Screaming would have been nice. Instead, his final words are a helpless whisper. “He has so little time left. I don’t want him to spend his last days bound to a hospital bed so they can feed him through a tube.”

Dean’s throat feels tight. He doesn’t think he could say anything more, but that’s okay. He said all he wanted.

The chair he just vacated is still warm when he sits again. Dean falls asleep there waiting for an answer that never comes.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Washed out morning light wakes Dean hours later to a stiff back and an aching neck. He’s cold, longs for a blanket, or better even, a bed. There is one right before him, but it’s occupied by a little brother who blinks at him through strands of messy hair.

Sam’s eyes look even more bloodshot than before, like sleeping only made it worse. A flush on his pale face speaks of another fever.

No angel came.

Sam tries to smile, despite clearly feeling like shit, and squeezes Dean’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

That’s the last thing Dean wants: Sam feeling guilty for being sick. “Don’t worry about it.” He lets go of Sam’s hand. Their palms are sweaty from having been pressed together for so long. “You know I always sleep better in hospital chairs.”

From the fallen expression on Sam’s face he can tell his attempt at humour didn’t work. Dean wishes he could take him in his arms like he would have if they were twenty years younger or alone in the room. He’d really like to just crawl into bed with Sam, snuggle under the covers beside him and drift back to sleep warm and holding his brother close.

He stretches instead and yawns. A second later a nurse comes in, checks on Sam’s roommate who isn’t happy about being woken up to have his temperature taken and verbally confirm that yes, he’s still feeling crappy. Afterwards she comes to Sam, takes his temperature as well and asks him how he feels. Sam feels fine, wants to leave. She doesn’t believe him. A doctor’s visit is announced for later in the morning, then she leaves again, and behind the curtain that hides him from view, Dean can hear turn over. Minutes later, the change in his breathing indicates his return to sleep.

Dean really wishes he wouldn’t snore so much. It doesn’t normally bother him, but today it grates on his nerves.

“When can we leave?” Sam asks, sounding all of five years old. Dean would love to just bundle him up and carry him out of here, but he’s afraid if he did that, his brother isn’t going to live for another week.

“Soon as you’re better, kid,” he answers. “Sorry. I know it sucks, but I won’t let you starve on me.” Dean sits on the edge of the bed and runs a hand through Sam’s hair to let him know he’s not angry at him.

“I’m feeling better already.” Sam tries to push himself up, but Dean holds him down – gently, so Sam won’t feel restrained. “Give me a toast and I’ll eat it. Hell, I’ll eat a steak! I’m really hungry actually.”

“No steaks on the menu,” Dean says regrettably. It’s a shame he knows his brother so well he can see through every act. “But I’ll try to smuggle something light in later, and we’ll see how you do with that.”

He’s kidding himself and he knows it. Even if Sam’s able to eat and keep down a toast or a bowl of soup, there’s no guarantee he’ll do it again tomorrow. And even if he does, a grown man can’t survive on a small salad a day. The proof for that is lying in a hospital bed before him.

“I want to go now.” It should sound childish and bratty, but there’s a hint of desperation in Sam’s large, wet eyes. “Please Dean. I don’t want to stay here.”

Dean swallows. Like him, Sam is afraid that if he doesn’t leave now, he’ll never leave again.

 _‘He saved the goddamn world for you and you just let him die here,’_ he thinks bitterly; a message not for Castiel alone but for all of heaven, and especially for God. “Just a few days, Sammy,” he promises. “Until your fever’s gone and you can walk more than three steps without falling over.” He also makes that promise to himself. Sam’s going to die – Dean knows that he can’t save him. But neither can any doctors, and Sammy is not going to die _here_.

“Hey, look!” Dean walks over to the window and the SpongeBob doll sitting there as if he had only just seen it. Anything to change the topic. “Look who also came for a visit!”

Sam frowns as if he had trouble following, and then he frowns some more. “Dude,” he says. “Did you _keep_ that thing?”

“No, the daughter of your buddy here must have left it.” Dean nods to the snoring man in the other bed, who’s happily ignorant of Dean picking up the doll and throwing it up in the air. It’s heavy as shit, like the other ones. They don’t make stuffed dolls like they used to. “I’m telling you, these things are everywhere.”

“Well, you sure have a talent for finding them,” Sam remarks. His voice is still weak, but he’s willing to join the banter. “Sure that’s coincidence?”

“What’s that supposed to imply, bitch?” Dean growls good naturedly. He looks at the doll contemplatively. “Besides, this motherfucker is badass. All hard and heavy – the doll for the real man.”

Sam groans. “Dean, seriously.”

“Well, he is.” He walks to the bed to let Sam see for himself but his brother flinches away when he offers the stuffed toy to him, all colour draining fro his face.

It’s odd, but not so unusual these days. Dean tries to keep things light even as he retreats to the window again. “Hey, I know he’s ugly, but I’m pretty sure it’s not contagious.”

“Did you look in the mirror lately?” Sam shoots back, but it’s lacking conviction. He shudders, as if cold. “I don’t know. It’s just like…” He shrugs, helplessly. “I don’t like it.”

Dean is about to make a remark that involves the words ‘pansy’ and ‘scared of dolls’, but then he remembers Chucky, who he had also been scared of when he was a kid. Following that, he remembers the case with the Japanese ritual summoning spirits into dolls and the cursed stuffed doll that also felt unusually heavy in his hands and sets SpongeBob back on the windowsill with a shudder.

It doesn’t make him feel better at all when the roommate’s family arrives later that day while Sam is tossing restlessly in his sleep, and the wife tells her little daughter to leave the doll alone because she’s not supposed to play with things that don’t belong to her.


	7. Chapter 6

Dean is well aware that it’s stupid. They can’t be haunted, least of all by a stupid possessed doll, because every place they stay at they ghost-proof. And powerful spirits may be powerful but even they have to follow rules. Being put in an iron box filled with salt restrained the last possessed doll they had to deal with pretty effectively, and the houses of both Bobby and Jim are the urban equivalent of that. Dean even drew some wards on the door and window frames of the hospital room and left a thin line of salt on the windowsill, yet there the doll sits and stares at him. So it can’t be possessed. Period.

That doesn’t stop it from creeping Dean out.

So at night, when both Mr. Roomy and Sam are fast asleep, Dean grabs the bloody thing and takes it for a little ride, because possessed or not, it needs to die in a fire. Somewhere outside the city on a remote little street, Dean deals out Winchester justice by the side of the road. The doll is salted and burned and Dean vows never to watch SpongeBob again.

He might go so far as to shoot the TV if it comes on.

Or, just, change channels or something.

He actually feels better after it’s done. He’s aware that what he did was silly since the doll wasn’t actually haunting them, but he feels better anyway, like the act has lifted a weight off him, or something like that. Or maybe he just missed the mindless destruction of other people’s stuff that comes with his job…

It’s dawn by the time he gets back to the city. Dean feels a little guilty, a little worried by then. It doesn’t matter how often Sam tells him to get out more, he still thinks he shouldn’t leave his brother alone for too long. And he didn’t even leave a message. Sam might have woken up and worried where he is, or believe Dean was never there in the first place and it was all just an illusion Lucifer or Michael used to torment him. He gets ideas like that sometimes. Dean knows from experience that his relative calm of the past few days can be lost in an instant.

Not to forget that his health has the unfortunate habit of taking turns for the worse when Dean isn’t looking.

Sam’s indeed awake when Dean comes back, and he was maybe slightly worried if the relieved smile he gives his brother in greeting is anything to go by. But he’s doing pretty well, by the look of it – in fact, he’s having breakfast when Dean comes in, and he finishes it all without every hesitating before taking a bite. Dean feels oddly reminded of the feeling of pride that came over him when his baby brother first mastered the use of a spoon without making a mess of himself and everything around him.

Not only is Sam eating, he’s looking a lot more healthy, too. The colour is back in his cheeks, his eyes are no longer bloodshot, and the doctor later informs Dean that the fever is gone completely. He says he didn’t expect Sam to get better so quickly. In fact, he’s been quite worried about Dean’s brother. Now it seems a good night’s rest did what all the medicine in the world wouldn’t have been able to do.

So the doctors are quite ready to talk to Dean about moving Sam from the hospital to a facility that should help him with his obvious food issues. Contrary to his words and expectations, Dean takes his brother that same day and leaves for the next state.

Sam doesn’t fall asleep the moment they hit the highway as Dean has become used to. He stays alert and full of an energy his body – better, but far from well – can hardly keep up with. He’s chatting with Dean and watching the world pass by, and not once does he look over his shoulder at something that isn’t there.

Somewhere between Washington and Georgia, Dean sends a silent little prayer of thanks to heaven. He doesn’t really believe that Cas had anything to do with Sam’s miraculous recovery, but it can’t hurt to have that covered.

There’s no reply but that’s okay. Dean can take only so many miracles in one day.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Their good luck lasts until about a hundred miles past Atlanta. It’s just beginning to get dark and Dean’s just beginning to think about turning in somewhere. This is the longest ride they’ve had in one day in ages, and he’s in pretty high spirits when suddenly, without warning, the car dies.

It kills Dean’s good mood instantly – especially when he can’t find the problem at once and the daylight disappears on him while he’s looking for it, leaving him to work with a flashlight in his mouth.

Sammy chooses that time to get restless again. He sits with his feet out the open door, huddled in a woollen blanket despite the night not being all that cold, and says dully, “There’s someone in the backseat.”

Dean looks up, walks around the car to check. “There’s no one, Sammy.”

Sam doesn’t answer, just hunches deeper into himself. It motivates Dean to work that much faster.

Eventually he finds the problem, just as Sam says, “I think I’m going crazy again,” in an emotionless tone, as if he were talking about the weather. “Because I’m pretty sure there is.”

In the dark of the night, that isn’t creepy at all. Dean’s glad that the sky is cloudy and grey rather than back. He can see pretty well, and the flashlight confirms that the backseat is empty.

Sam looks at him. He doesn’t look crazy, just cold. “I want to go home, Dean,” he says matter-of-factly, and that makes Dean shiver and feel helpless because they don’t have a home to go to.

So he doesn’t answer, only goes to around the car to get his tool kit from the trunk. He opens it and SpongeBob grins up at him, the yellow fabric almost glowing in the shine of the flashlight.

He stares, perfectly silent for a moment. Then he curses, tears the damn, ugly pest from his car and holds it by one of its legs as he runs to the passenger door to get the lighter fluid in the glove compartment.

Sam looks up at him, his eyes in shadows and hunched over like a goblin. Even in the weak light Dean can see confusion – maybe worry – on his face when he notices the doll.

“What’s going on, Dean?” he asks, grasping immediately the connection between his brother’s agitation and the stuffed toy dangling in his grip. “Where’d that come from?”

“Dammed if I know,” Dean growls. “Was in the fucking trunk. I _burned_ it, Sammy! Last night, when I was out, I took this thing and burned it by the roadside!”

He emphasises his words by throwing the doll to the ground. Due to its weight it doesn’t bounce but lands heavily with a flat thud.

Sam flinches at the sound, goes even paler as he stares down at the thing. “Dean,” he whispers. “What’s inside that doll? What is it stuffed with?”

“Don’t know. Feels like sand, though not quite as heavy.” Dean takes out his knife and flips it open. Time to find out.

“Remember the case in Trenton? The Japanese ritual?” Sam asks quietly before Dean gets to start his operation.

Hell, yes, Dean does. “What are those dolls filled with?”

“Rice.”

Maybe. It feels like it could be rice. But that still doesn’t make sense. “Can’t be one of those, Sammy,” Dean reminds him. “Those spirits latch onto the one performing the ritual, right? And neither of us did. Also, shouldn’t they be bound locally, too? Doesn’t make sense.”

Maybe it’s just a freak coincidence. Right. Sam doesn’t say anything at all.

Dean cuts the doll open and white rice pours out like bowels from a mutilated body.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

They salt and burn the doll again. Sam protests, says that’s not going to work after so long, but Dean does it anyway, because the last time he did Sam got so much better, and he’s not going to place too much faith in the possibility that that was Cas’ doing. Even if it comes back, they’ll just burn it again and again and buy more time until they find a way to exorcise it forever.

The fire hasn’t even died yet when Dean takes out his phone and calls Bobby, asks him to check over that doll case for them again. He hands the phone to Sam who gives Bobby all the details and the names of everyone they ever had to do with in that city.

How much this worries Bobby Dean can tell when he doesn’t even grumble about the extra work or the trip through the country he’s been unexpectedly blessed with. Instead, he tells them to keep their eyes open and stay away from things they can randomly kill them.

Dean and Sam know from experience that just about anything can randomly kill someone. But Dean doesn’t think whatever is after them wants them dead, and Sam agrees.

All the things disappearing on them come to mind. The weird noises Dean has never been able to completely explain away. And all that in a ghost-proof environment.

This little fucker is powerful. If it wanted to kill them, it would have, long ago.

Either that, or it’s a sadistic little fucker that wants to creep them out and push Sam completely into insanity before finishing them off…

In any case, it’s broken Dean’s car. He’s pretty certain about that, and silently moves it a few notches up on the Bastard Scale.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says, hours later, when the car is moving again and they are driving on toward sunrise. “Looks like you’re not as crazy as we thought.” A grin spreads over his face, uninvited. Dean should feel bad, should apologize for not believing Sam when he told him about the cold and the things he sensed behind him, but he doesn’t. It’s all drowned out by mind-blowing relief.

Sam isn’t that far gone yet. Maybe there’s hope after all.

(Dean rather feels like kissing Sam. A moment like this calls for a kiss, and he nearly does so before he remembers why that would be wrong.)

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Knowing his hold on reality isn’t as fragile as he’d thought lifts a weight off Sam’s shoulders he has lived with for so long he barely noticed it anymore. The moment it hits him, he nearly bursts into tears.

They don’t know what kind of spirit they have on their asses. It’s obviously very powerful, and might yet kill them. And Sam doesn’t for one moment believe that burning the doll got them more than a few hours’ break – a day at best. But this, for once, is something they can fight. And if fighting it kills him, Sam’s fine by that. He’s spent all his life accepting that possibility in just about anything he did. It’s a thousand times better than sitting around just waiting for the end.

The car isn’t safe from that thing, so they find a motel. The motel won’t be safe either, but it has a bathroom and beds, and as long as they don’t know more there’s nothing they can do anyway.

Sam is tired when they arrive. The state is so familiar he hardly notices. Sleeping would be bad anyway, because he fears nightmares, more than usual, and the reason for that is Dean. His brother is so euphoric about the revelation that they are haunted that he seems to forget the ghost is not the cause for everything that’s wrong with Sam.

Sam doesn’t want to take that from him, not so quickly.

He takes a shower, feeling disgusting after the days in the hospital and car, while Dean creates salt and iron lines with an obsession ignorant of the fact that those have done nothing to protect them so far. Once Sam is dry and dressed – his injuries still cause him trouble and his movements are sluggish and slow for lack of energy – he sits down on the bed with his laptop.

Sam hasn’t searched the internet for weird occurrences for far too long. What he searches for now are cases involving possessed dolls. As expected, none show up on a general surface search.

He finds something else that’s interesting, though, as he googles places and people that had to do with the case in Trenton. Of course, the internet provides him with the articles on Caithy Lansing’s gruesome murder. He already knows most of them except for a small article on how the police still have no leads on the killer. Sam thinks of the girl’s family, who will never know what exactly happened to her. Maybe they will never find peace.

Experience has shown him that telling them about the exact circumstances of Caithy’s death will likely do more harm than good. It does nothing to make him feel better.

What makes him stop, however, is another article that mentions Caithy’s murder in relation to another violent death not far from where she lived. The paper speculates on a serial killer – the other victim wasn’t killed in the same way, but it was just as brutal, random, and lacking clues.

“Jeremy Leads was killed,” Sam tells Dean, who just settled down with a sandwich. (He placed another one in front of Sam, who’s ignoring it. He’s not avoiding food, though – he’s just distracted. And too tired to eat.)

“That an actor from that show we watched at Bobby’s?”

“No, he was one of the witnesses we talked to in Trenton,” Sam reminds his brother. “Jerry, remember? The guy who didn’t see or do anything? You didn’t like him.”

Dean’s face scrunches up as he tries to remember. “Oh, right, him!” he finally exclaims, his face brightening. “Jerry. I didn’t kill him, though.”

“No one thinks that, Dean,” Sam says patiently.

“And he’s dead? Did he trip and fall down the stairs?” Sometimes Sam’s brother shows an impressive lack in sympathy.

“No, Dean. ‘Killed’ as in ‘murdered’. Someone broke his arms and legs and then used the forks and knifes from his kitchen drawer to nail him to the cabinets left and right of his oven, with his head inside and the oven running.”

Dean winces. “Ow. That sucks.”

That’s one way to put it.

“The police are thinking serial killer.”

“Because of that girl that was stabbed to death with her nail cutter?”

“Yeah. Again, nothing of use to be found at the side of the crime. No fingerprints, no signs of forced entry. If not for the way they died making it impossible, the police would have to go for suicide. It’s not the same, though. For one, Caithy was killed quickly and mutilated later. Jerry died because his head was roasted.”

Dean flinches again. “Well, it wasn’t the same killer, right? You think that same spirit might have gone for Caithy’s friends next?”

“I highly doubt it. Jerry died after we exorcised the thing. Also…” Sam trails off and forces his tired eyes to focus on the article again as Dean’s words bring his attention to something he missed. “That’s odd,” he mutters.

“What’s odd?”

“The police are thinking a serial killer is choosing random victims from the university both Caithy and Jerry went to. They don’t seem to consider it could be someone they both know. In fact, it’s never even mentioned that they knew each other.”

“Maybe the info just didn’t make it into the article?” Dean suggests.

“Yeah, how likely is that?” Sam rubs the back of his neck with one hand in hope of easing his pounding headache and reaches for his cell phone with the other. “I’m gonna tell Bobby about it.”

“Dude,” Dean says, snatching the phone away. “Hit the sack. You look half dead. Bobby’s on the case already – I don’t think he’s gonna miss the ‘Dead by Oven’ thing. If you call him about it he’ll just get irritated.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam gives in. He eyes the bed, looking for an excuse to stay awake a little longer. At least until Dean sleeps and maybe won’t notice if he has a nightmare.

Maybe the relief that fills his brother over today’s revelation will help Dean sleep better now.

“You should go to bed soon, too,” Sam tells him. “When’s the last time you got proper rest?”

“Couple of days ago,” Dean admits. “Okay, here’s the deal: I’ll sleep once you finish your sandwich.”

Looking at the sandwich (salad, tomatoes and cheese, no meat) Sam thinks, okay. He can eat that. And he does, slowly and with some effort, but he gets it all down. Dean doesn’t even pretend not to watch, and when Sam’s done, there’s such joy and love on his brother’s face his heart aches a little.

Then Dean comes over and hugs him. It comes unexpected, startling Sam since Dean isn’t exactly the hugging type. The last time Dean touched him unexpectedly, he kissed Sam and left him confused and lost. Now, he only holds him close until Sam relaxes in his arms and hugs him back.

He’s sitting and Dean is standing, so Dean has to bend down a little to place a kiss on Sam’s forehead that says more than all the words Dean wouldn’t be able to say anyway.

(Sometimes, Sam misses the time when he was the smaller one and fit safely into his big brother’s arms, just like this.)

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Just as Sam feared, the nightmares return with a vengeance. He comes awake curled up on the bed, shaking and crying, the covers kicked off the bed despite how cold it is in the room. He doesn’t care, because his mind is still burning.

He needs a long time to get back to the present, to remember where he is. To realise that he must have slept for hours since it’s dark now and it wasn’t when he fell asleep. (It feels like years.)

It’s quiet, and for a moment Sam hopes that he was right about Dean, too – that his brother’s sleep is so deep tonight that Sam didn’t wake him with his nightmares, or kept him awake all night. But then he realises that it’s not quite as dark as he thought it was: there’s the light of the vacancy sign falling in through the window, and the light of the full moon, combining to cast a faint blue hue over everything. He notices it out of the corner of his eyes – only right in front of him it’s completely dark, like a shadow swallowing all light, and only when the shadow moves does Sam realise that it’s Dean, sitting on the edge of his bed. Only then does he feel the hand in his hair, running down to trail over his face and wipe away his tears.

Sam might have muttered his name. He thinks he hears the sound though he has no memory of moving his tongue, of using his voice. Dean bends down to kiss his forehead, his cheeks, finally his lips. Eventually, Sam feels Dean’s tongue sliding between his teeth though he has no sense of opening his mouth.

When Dean’s hand (strong, warm) slides down his body and under the waistband of his pants, Sam barely knows what’s going on. He thinks he might be terrified, or lost (or both). Maybe he’s shaking harder than before.

He knows for a fact that he leans into the touch, and if it hurts, he never says so.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

When Dean wakes up, Sam is still asleep. He looks calm for once. Peaceful. So Dean lets him sleep and even takes the incredible risk of leaving him alone for half an hour to get breakfast.

He buys doughnuts, cherry pie for himself, and burgers, already looking forward to hearing his brother bitch about his unhealthy eating habits. To make sure Sam eats anything at all, he also gets a salad and some fruit.

And coffee. Goes without saying. They both have pulled so many all-nighters in their lives that their bodies constantly threaten to go into stand-by mode if coffee isn’t in the immediate vicinity.

Not that that would be such a bad thing, actually. Sammy seems to have slept well for once, and Dean hasn’t gotten this much rest in ages. Maybe they should stock up on sleep while they have the chance.

It’s not like they have anything better to do before Bobby can give them some answers.

If he even finds any. There’s always that…

Sam is gone from the bed when Dean gets back to the motel. For one moment, Dean only notices his absence and an unwelcome flash of panic does evil things to his good mood. Then he hears the sound of the running shower and his good mood returns with flying colours. For a while he tries to wait for his brother before starting breakfast, but his brother seems to have decided that older siblings don’t have a monopoly on endless showers, so Dean starts without him.

He leaves one burger, one doughnut and the pie, just so Sam can see them when he finally gets out of the bathroom and pull a Bitchface Mark C on them.

Before Sam shows up, though, Dean’s cell rings, and he frowns when he sees Bobby’s name on the display. He didn’t expect a call so soon, and unexpected calls usually mean nothing good.

 _“I checked on your old case, and you boys are in big trouble,”_ Bobby tells him without preamble the moment Dean answers the call, proving his suspicion right – and confusing him a little.

“You checked it out? How? Where are you?”

 _“In Trenton, you idjit. Where else?”_

“I only called you yesterday. It takes at least two days to get there.”

 _“By car, yes. Which is why I took the plane, soon as I got your call. Not all of us are scared of flying.”_

“I’m not scared of planes, I’m scared of plane crashes,” Dean defends himself. “Anyway, you’re quick, even if you got there yesterday. What did you find?”

 _“Well, the very unusual murder of that guy you dealt with gave me a good idea where to start looking.”_

“We found out about that.”

 _“Unfortunately, the police already got all his stuff, although that wasn’t much of a problem. But what I found there… Oh boy. He had it coming.”_

“What did you find?” Dean asks impatiently. He glances over to the bathroom door, but it remains stubbornly closed. “What does it have to do with us?”

 _“You remember what that Hitori Kakurenbo ritual is about?”_

The name sounds so different spoken by someone who actually knows how to pronounce it that Dean has trouble recognizing the words. When he does, he has to admit that he is a little fuzzy on the details. “Sam is the expert on that stuff. I just set things on fire.”

 _“Then why did you even call me about being haunted by SpongeBob?”_ Bobby growls.

“Okay, so I know the ritual serves to summon a spirit into a doll, play hide-and-seek with it and then salt and burn it. And that it’s some kind of game.”

 _“It is now. Originally, it was a lot more serious.”_

Dean’s not surprised about that. To come up with a summoning ritual, you have to be versed in spiritual things. And no one who knows what they are doing would invent a summoning simply for the sake of entertainment.

Least of all an open summoning.

“Hit me with it.”

 _“Well, in case you don’t remember, for starters you send out the invitation for every spirit nearby by completing the first steps. When you cut the red thread around the doll to set the spirit inside free, meaning you allow it to move the doll and act on its own. It’s still bound to the doll though, and also to you, because you put your nails or hair inside.”_

Dean makes a sound of confirmation. Sam told him this much.

 _“Before you cut the thread you leave the doll submerged in water, count to ten, and go look for it. Shouldn’t be too hard to find it at this point. When you do, you stab it, thereby cutting the thread. You tell it you got it and pass the tag on to the spirit. You hide in a spiritually protected place, so it can’t find you. It’s extremely important that it can’t find you.”_

“Because if it does, it’ll kill you.”

 _“Not necessarily. Most spirits aren’t that powerful or malevolent. But you have to be the one who gets out of the hiding place and finds the doll first, thus winning the game. The ritual as it is performed by amateurs ends there, but originally, this was just the set up.”_

“For what?”

 _“For binding the spirit to you permanently and forcing it into your service. The “game” is merely a means to humiliate the spirit and prove that you are stronger. That’s why it is so important to defeat it repeatedly, first when you find it and then when it can’t find you before you find it again. After that, it has to follow your orders.”_

“Okay, I get it,” Dean jumps in before Bobby can move on to the historical roots. “Just tell me what Jerry had to do with that. He chickened out from even performing the ritual in its abridged version.”

 _“Hardly. Not only did he perform it, he used blood instead of nail clippings which creates a much stronger binding and attracts a different kind of guest. Also, he did the full ritual, with the goal of enslaving a spirit to him. A very powerful one.”_

“And very pissed.” Dean nods to himself. That obviously happened after Sam and Dean visited the guy, but it’s clear now that Jerry already planned to do it by the time they met and only played the superstitious coward.

Dean doesn’t like to be made a fool. If the guy wasn’t dead, he’d go and kick him in the ass.

“So, obviously that didn’t work so well,” Dean sums it up. “How did he even know about it? Was he a hunter?”

 _“No, but he obviously knew about what we do. In fact, he knew_ us _! I found lists and files about pretty much every hunter I know among his stuff.”_

Something about that doesn’t sit well with Dean at all. “What was he planning to do?”

 _“As far as I see, that guy was performing summons, curses and other shit for paying customers. A bit like that Bela girl – remember her?”_

“As if I could forget her,” Dean grumbles. That bitch.

 _“But not only was he after the money,”_ Bobby continues _, “He also was after power. I have no idea what he wanted to do with that spirit, but I get the feeling it’s nothing good.”_

“So, I suppose he wasn’t really a student at the college,” Dean says. “Did you check that?”

 _“’Course I did. No, he just enrolled a few weeks earlier. Made friends quickly. I spoke to Rebecca Starsfield, the one whose apartment you cleansed.”_

“Yeah, I remember her.”

 _“She said it was his idea in the first place. Or rather, it was him who pointed her to a website about the ritual and gave her the idea to try it.”_

Dean feels disgust welling up in him. “Are you saying he used those kids as test subjects for his own stunt?”

There is a brief silence on the other end. _“Dean, it’s worse than that,”_ Bobby finally tells him.

“Worse how?” Dean doesn’t like this at all.

 _“Like I said, he kept an eye on the hunting world. He waited until you two were in the area, and then he used his new friends to lure you there.”_

Dean feels cold all of a sudden. “Why? What for?”

 _“According to his notes, he meant to use a particularly strong agent to summon the spirit. Usually, the ritual ain’t strong enough to breach the wall to where the really unpleasant shit is trapped. A normal human, even using blood, can’t reach there.”_

“So you’re saying he wasn’t human?”

 _“He was. Don’t you get it, Dean? He didn’t use his own blood.”_

Dean’s mouth is dry, his tongue like lead. “He used Sam’s.”

 _“Yeah. Somehow – don’t ask me how – he found out about Sam. That he used to be Lucifer’s vessel, his time in hell, the part that yellow eyed bastard wanted him to play. And he obviously thought someone with such strong ties to hell would serve his purpose just fine.”_

“That doesn’t make sense,” Dean protests. “How would he even _get_ …” He trails off when he remembers the exorcism in the park, Sam’s injuries. He bled all over the place. Getting some blood would have been easy if Jerry was watching them.

Bobby seems to get that an answer to that question isn’t necessary; he continues, and his voice keeps getting more urgent. _“So he performed the ritual, and from there I can only guess. I know he felt safe, because he didn’t use his own blood and the focus of the spirit wasn’t on him. Thought he could distract it with the absence of the person it was bound to, defeat it in the game and have an evil little slave for the rest of eternity. But apparently, the spirit didn’t like his plan. It was too powerful for salt and iron to stop it, and the first thing it did was kill Jerry, who must have been little more than an annoyance to it.”_

And who quite deserved what he got. Dean is angry. He should be worried, maybe panic a little, because they really have a problem here, but mostly, he’s just angry. Angry that this asshole would use Sam like that, _endanger_ him like that, as if Sam hadn’t already suffered enough.

“And now the thing is here, after Sam,” Dean completes Bobby’s story. “What does it want? How do we get rid of it? What the hell _is it_ even?”

 _“Dammed if I know, boy. But I get a feeling you ain’t gonna like it.”_ Bobby sighs, sounding wary. _“It’s big and evil, that much I can tell you. It’s one of those things that don’t usually find a way into our world. It’s something_ alien _, Dean. No ghost and no demon – nothing that has ever been human.”_

Dean thinks of all the salt and iron and protective sigils that have done nothing to protect them so far. “It doesn’t know the rules,” he mutters.

 _“Well, I wouldn’t count on it in any case,”_ Bobby agrees. _“Dean, I’m going to hit the libraries, see if I can find anything about that creature. I’ll tell you when I got something useful.”_

“What can I do?” Slowly, the desperation is creeping in after all. “We don’t even know what that thing is!”

 _“You can keep an eye on your brother, for starters,”_ Bobby says in that ‘you are obviously an idiot’ tone that calms Dean like no other. _“How is he, anyway? He with you?”_

“Been showering for at least twenty minutes. But he’s doing fine. Slept better than he has in weeks.” Bobby doesn’t know yet about Sam’s newest visit to the hospital, and Dean wants to keep it that way. No need to distract the man. “I think burning the doll really helped to get us some air, here.”

 _“That’s good – keep doing that whenever it shows up again.”_

“Right. We’ll just hold out until you figure out what it is and what it wants.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line long enough to make Dean’s stomach sink further. “Bobby?” Still nothing. “Bobby, you have an idea what it wants, right? And I won’t like it.”

Finally, Bobby answers – with a heavy sigh. _“I don’t know. It wants Sam, Dean, though what for, I can’t tell you. My guess would be, though, that it wants a better host. Right now it’s bound to a stuffed toy. It might try to abandon the doll and move onto a more suitable and more powerful vessel.”_

They just can’t ever get a break, can they? “Great. This is like Lucifer all over again.”

 _“Yeah,”_ Bobby agrees. _“But this one doesn’t have to ask first.”_

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The first five minutes of his shower Sam spent standing in front of the running water, lacking the energy to step under it. He woke up to an empty motel room, momentarily worrying but then realising that the impala was gone and Dean had just left to get breakfast or something; this was normal and he _wants_ things to be normal.

It’s just been so long since anything was remotely normal for them that Sam needed a moment to adjust to it.

What happened between them last night was nowhere near normal, but Sam woke up so drained of energy he had trouble even thinking about it.

He didn’t even notice he’d slept at all, just felt like he turned and shifted around all night. But when he opened is eyes daylight flooded into the room and Dean was gone, and that absence was what made him get up to check the parking lot, despite the heaviness of his limbs and the all too familiar pain pounding through his head.

It’s worse, the headache, than it has been in a while. Sam would have loved to just lie around suffering in silence all day, but he needed a shower and probably new sheets as well, and he was so cold that a hot shower seemed the only thing that could save him from freezing.

But as soon as the water was running, all will to do anything left him. Even when the water is finally hot and he’s finally standing under the spray, he does nothing to actively try to get clean.

Eventually, the thought that the hot water won’t last forever finds its way into his sluggish brain, and Sam starts to wash his hair, soap his body. The days-old cuts on his palms open while he does so. They do that sometimes, when he showers. He probably should have gotten stitches for that, he thinks as he watches drops of blood and pink foam mingle with the water and go down the drain.

Didn’t he get stitches for his hands? He thought someone in the hospital took care of it, but as he looks at them now under the flowing water, there are only open cuts, and maybe some tiny marks where stitches used to be.

Odd.

Sam steps out of the shower after what feels like forever. He rubs himself dry, soiling the towel with blood, but it’s bleeding less now and it’s not like they haven’t left hundreds of blood-stained towels in motel rooms all over the United States.

He slips into his jeans next, managing to keep it mostly blood-free. After that he sits on the seat of the toilet, feeling like passing out or maybe like crying. Finally, he stands before the sink to brush his teeth and shave. He cuts himself and watches the blood go down the drain.

It tickles as it runs down his cheek.

Sam looks up at his mirror image, and his mirror image looks up at him. “Hey,” they both say, but Sam’s got blood tickling down his face and his mirror image doesn’t.

“What the fuck do you want?” Sam whispers. His reflection matches the words perfectly, and the second voice is so well timed with his Sam wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been so very different from his own.

The reflection smirks at him, so quickly it’s almost invisible, and blinks when Sam doesn’t. Then it smiles, or maybe it snarls, showing blood-stained teeth before it turns and walks away.

Sam stares at the mirror that shows everything but him and doesn’t move until the wall does.

He couldn’t even say how it moves, just that it’s (alive) different. It’s in shadow – dark lines against the green tiles, though Sam can’t tell what’s casting the shadow, or if it’s been there before. He touches it, feels nothing but tile under his hurting palm. It’s cool, almost pleasant against his heated skin, but something makes him withdraw the hand, quickly as if burned.

He doesn’t get far. The shadow wrapped around his wrist keeps him from running, and while Sam’s tired mind still tries to process what is happening to him, cold fingers take hold of his shoulder from behind. They slide against his neck like a lover’s caress and then around his chest, and suddenly he’s pinned with his back against the wall and the shadow while another body presses against his naked chest, inhumanly strong and cold and damp and dead.

Then Sam is falling, and he doesn’t hit the ground until he’s all the way down.


	8. Chapter 7

“Hold on a second.” Dean puts down the phone, looking over towards the bathroom, alarmed by the noise he heard. “Sammy?” he calls. “You alright in there?”

There’s no reply. Bobby is forgotten as Dean races over to the door. He has to kick it in because it’s locked, and then it’s stopped by Sam who’s lying on the floor just before it, and by the time Dean manages to squeeze through the gap, Sam already stopped twitching and is staring blindly ahead.

“Oh, no no no,” Dean whispers, cradling his brother’s head in his arms. “Not again. Sammy, come on. Wake up.”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

To Dean’s considerable relief and surprise, Sam does wake up only minutes after Dean picked him up and carried him over to the bed. He curls up and clutches his head as if it was going to explode the moment he takes his hands away, but he’s lucid and eventually accepts the glass of water and the pills Dean hands him.

“What happened?” Dean asks. But Sam only shakes his head and keeps staring at the floor as if trying to get a hold of himself, and Dean is distracted by the tiny agitated noise coming from the direction of his phone.

 _“Damn it, idjit, do you want me to have a heart attack over here?”_ Bobby curses as soon as there’s someone listening to him.

“Sorry. Sam had another episode. But,” Dean hurries to add when he hears the older hunter’s curses increase in volume, “it only lasted a few minutes. He’s fine now.”

 _“So it was only a small hell-seizure?”_ Bobby asks sceptically.

“Kind of. Listen, he’s awake and all, but I should really…”

 _“Take care of him,”_ Bobby interrupts. _“I’m gonna call you when I got something. And Dean?”_

“Yeah?”

 _“Be careful. Both of you.”_

“Right.” Dean snaps the phone shut and goes back to Sam, but before he can reach his brother, Sam gets off the bed and moves over to his laptop.

“That Bobby?” he asks.

“Yeah. He got some interesting info.” Sam probably isn’t in the best shape to deal with news like that, but taking it easy with him isn’t going to help him in the long run.

“Tell me,” Sam orders, sounding a little breathless, his eyes never leaving the screen. “We need to kick this thing back where it came from.”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam clearly isn’t happy about what Bobby found out, but Dean gets the impression that he isn’t very surprised either. He throws himself into research, basically becomes one with his laptop, and refuses to leave the motel room or Dean’s presence. He doesn’t even go to the bathroom, and Dean would think he must be running a risk of dying of an exploded bladder, if Sam wouldn’t conveniently forget to eat or drink anything all day.

His brother refuses to tell him what triggered the latest flashback, but to Dean who knows him like no other it’s obvious that he’s terrified of something. And there are a thousand remarks he could make about Sam’s newfound need to stick close to him, but if the kid needs him to feel safe, then Dean isn’t going to make fun of it.

That’s what big brothers are for, after all.

So he sticks close to Sam. Even goes so far as to stand behind him and rub his brother’s tense shoulders in strong, calming movements, and if his fingers linger a little too long on Sam’s long neck, wander a little too far down his shirt, Sam never mentions it. If anything, he leans into the touch as he continues to click through the internet, or flips through the books on supernatural lore they got from the trunk. Their dad’s journal is consulted and tells them nothing useful. The phone stays silent.

Briefly after nightfall, Dean has to leave Sam alone, however briefly. Sam has abstained from food and liquid all day, but Dean hasn’t, and eventually his bladder refuses to be ignored any longer. To avoid either an embarrassing situation or the sad realisation that Sammy is so absorbed in his research he wouldn’t even realise if his brother pissed himself (or alternately died in a very wet explosion), Dean gently squeezes Sam’s shoulder and mutters, “Back in a sec.”

Whatever new website Sam just found, it’s more interesting than the lack of Dean he’s facing. He doesn’t react to the words at all, which is better than a dramatic, tear-filled scene caused by Dean needing to take a leak, but slightly disappointing anyway.

He makes it through the bathroom routine just fine, and since things are going so well even dares going around the corner of the main room to the little kitchen. They actually have a hot plate in their room, and a microwave, which are rather unimportant details considering they usually eat take-out and the last time Dean used a motel room microwave it was to splatter a fairy.

What he’s after is the coffee machine – the only part of the kitchen they ever really need. He’s not tired yet, but they are certainly in for a long night, and the sooner they start raising the caffeine level, the better.

A sudden gust of cold air makes Dean shiver. He realises almost instantly that the windows are all closed, and therefore there shouldn’t be any cold air. Alarmed, he looks up, but he’s standing with his back against the wall, and before him there’s only the empty kitchen, and the only movement comes from his reflection in the dark glass of the microwave. His reflection is looking startled, worried, and very shocked when he becomes aware of Sam’s reflection standing beside his, gazing silently, close enough to touch.

Sam in nowhere near him.

In the reflection, Sam reaches for him, and maybe Dean feels the ghost of a touch just before the glass explodes into a thousand little shards. Dean turns away and hides his face in his arms, and when he looks up again, Sam is standing beside him, Taurus in his hands, looking grim.

“Reflections are bad,” he states, like some old, friendly giant from a children’s movie. “Better avoid them.” A friendly giant with a loaded gun, and it takes Dean far, far too long to realise that he never heard a shot.

When he does, he doesn’t mention it.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The manager never shows up to see what the racket is about and kick them out with an ugly bill for vandalizing his kitchen. Maybe, Dean thinks, the exploding glass was as silent to everyone else as the gunshot was for him. Sam doesn’t seem to notice it. He just goes back to his books and websites, and eventually calls Bobby.

They speak on the phone for a long time. Sam puts Bobby on speaker and Dean listens with one ear while he goes over the useless protections again and keeps an eye out for random SpongeBobs lurking around to be burned once more.

Seriously. Jerry couldn’t possibly have found a stupider doll for this.

Bobby didn’t get anything particularly useful so far, just a lot of general stuff. Dean doesn’t think that’s going to help any, but Sam seems interested enough. He’s been after general stuff himself, knowing they wouldn’t get anything better. So he’s researched what little lore there is on creatures native to hell that are not demons, and he researched whatever there is to know about exorcisms he didn’t know before. Dean thinks his brain might explode soon, but Sam’s brain has been running on overdrive for so long, it probably doesn’t even notice the information overload.

Not as long as there are pills to fight the headache, anyway.

Sam tells Bobby about their recent experiences with their guest, hoping it’ll give the older hunter another clue how to deal with it. Dean can tell Bobby isn’t happy about what he hears – and neither is Dean. When Sam mentions, in passing, how the thing attacked (attacked?) him in the bathroom, Dean feels a little like punching him, because this? This is not the kind of thing you keep from your very concerned big brother.

In the end, Dean can’t even tell if the conversation was of any use at all, but Sam, Sam looks… not hopeful, but determined. Ready. (Or sick of waiting.) Whatever he’s thinking of doing, he’ll do it soon.

 _“What are you planning?”_ Bobby isn’t stupid, and he doesn’t need to see Sam’s face to read him like a book. He sounds sceptical, like whatever Sam’s going to do can only go wrong.

“Can’t tell you,” Sam informs him. “It’s here. Listening. I’d rather keep it as much a surprise as I can.”

This, Bobby seems to accept, though he still doesn’t sound happy when he ends the call.

“We’re not gonna do anything today,” Sam says just before he hangs up. “So if you find out anything else, let me know.” He snaps the phone shut and even though he doesn’t say anything, the way he looks at Dean tells him all he needs to know.

It’s time to get started.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Sam finds them a fitting spot in a forest not far from the town. Sam tells Dean what stuff to gather, what kind of preparations to make. Sam cuts Dean’s arm and draws a magic circle on the floor with his blood because he can’t use his own. Sam explains that the circle will protect them from eavesdropping for all of four minutes and Sam explains his plan. Sam says, “We need to do this tonight. It’s getting stronger by the minute.”

Dean doesn’t like Sam’s plan.

Sam doesn’t give a shit. Sam’s eyes are gleaming and his movements hasty and his voice is rough, but this is the normal kind of madness that comes over him whenever he wants to do something and nothing is going to stop him.

They’re going to separate. Dean doesn’t like that either, but for the sake of the mission it’s necessary. The spirit is bound to Sam, so as long as Sam isn’t nearby, it won’t see what Dean is doing.

Dean argued that there is no guarantee that the spirit doesn’t know anyway, because it’s telepathic or doesn’t give a shit about the protective circle drawn in Dean’s blood. In return, Sam told him that he’s aware of that, and that’s why his plan doesn’t involve giving the thing a chance. Dean was wrong – it does follow the rules. There are _always_ rules. They only have to find them.

Sam might have found them. Maybe not. They are going to find out and…

…and it’s going to work. Of course it’s going to work. Dean won’t accept anything else. He didn’t lose his brother to Lucifer, not for good (not yet), so he certainly won’t lose him to some lame-ass creature from the pit that doesn’t even have a name, least of all a major religion declaring it Enemy Number One.

It’s going to be okay. When it hits Dean (again) he’s so giddy he can hardly breathe. He’d thought Sam was lost completely, but he’s only haunted. They’re getting away one more time, when Dean thought it was over, and the stupid spirit-thing isn’t going to ruin that. Sam is going to be fine, and that knowledge feels surprisingly much like walking into the room after Cold Oak and finding Sam alive and puzzled and complaining that Dean’s hug hurt his back.

Maybe that’s because watching Sam fall apart felt a lot like the two days before that moment.

Sam will be fine. Not perfect, maybe, and maybe not forever, but for a long time to come, if Dean is going to have any say in it. Perhaps for long enough.

(He’s thinking in terms of a future again, and that’s a dangerous thing to do, but it’s so hard not to be euphoric when suddenly everything looks like hope again.)

So he hugs Sam before they part. They don’t have time for it, but he hugs him anyway – close and tight and heartfelt, but brief. When Dean lets go, he looks Sam in the eyes and says, “You’re going to be okay,” and maybe beams a little at his own words, but he means them. “It’s gonna be over tomorrow so don’t fuck this up.”

After that he kisses Sam, because he doesn’t feel anymore like this will destroy them, and they have been almost there for most of their lives anyway. This time, Sam kisses him back eventually, and when they part, he says, “Okay. Okay.”

As Dean leaves, Sam grins like someone who’s happy.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The worst thing about the doll is how it never moves. It doesn’t walk around, doesn’t talk or follow you with its eyes. It’s just there, and then it’s somewhere else. Some people who perform the ritual find their doll in the wrong room with a razor blade lying nearby, but they’ll never see the doll holding the blade, ready to stab them.

It’s always near Sam. Even now, as he’s standing on the dead leaves, it’s lurking between the trees. Once it’s been found, it can’t run. It’s can’t fight. But it has to be found first, and all Sam can do about that is hope.

Finding the doll is Dean’s job. He’s looking for it, but this time it doesn’t want to be found, and they are in a forest.

A forest with few trees in this area, much space between them, no undergrowth, and the leaves aren’t thick. Many trees don’t have any leaves at all. This part of the forest is dying.

Which is part of the reason why Sam has chosen it.

Above him, the moon is full and bright. That it will make any bright yellow object in this area easier to find is a welcome side effect. The fact that there’s a full moon tonight has nothing at all to do with the time Sam has chosen for his plan. It’s a coincidence, nothing else.

The day of the month is inconsequential. The hour of the day is not. When Sam came here, he heard the town’s clock tower chime three quarters of an hour. That was seven minutes ago. He’s been counting.

There are rules. There are always rules. They know nothing about the creature Jerry invited into this world but things Sam doesn’t want to know. They do know about the ritual that called the creature, and rituals are not made up from nothing. Their creation follows lines that are written nowhere.

The thing is still bound to that ritual, and to the rules it stemmed from.

At least until it manages to leave behind the means that hold it in this world and move on. But if that happens, Dean will have to deal with it on his own.

The forest, even dead, is full of noises. Rustling of stray leaves, twigs breaking. It could be Dean, or maybe the doll moving where no one is looking. It’s the thing that’s lurking, waiting, and nearly ready to strike.

But not quite yet. For one more night, it is too weak to take what it wants.

In the distance, the bell of the clock tower rings four times, marking the full hour. Three more rings give the time.

Hitori Kakurenbo is played at three AM. Sam takes out a knife and starts carving.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

It only takes minutes. Sam listens to the noises around him and he can feel its presence now, as real as he feels the blood running down his arms. It’s getting closer with every heartbeat, like hot breath on his neck, and what really unsettles him is that even as he fights the instinct to run away, he can’t tell which of the noises are evil coming closer and which are just noises.

Just like he can’t tell if his plan has any chance of working. It’s all untested, terra incognita. All Sam knows is that he doesn’t want it to fail for more than the obvious reasons.

He wants to live. It’s strange, feeling this way. He hasn’t felt like this in a very long time.

So, he doesn’t really feel like letting some evil ghost with an ego take that life away from him by taking over.

 _You’re wrong,_ a voice says right beside him. _Oh, Sammy, you are so wrong. You’re not going to die and I’m not going to become you._

Sam feels the breath in his ear as it speaks, and the touch of cold, clammy fingers around his arm.

 _You are going to become me._

A shiver runs down his spine. He turns to look, has to look though he doesn’t want to see. His heart is pounding with both fear and exhilaration. This, finally, is something he can fight.

The thing that looks back at him is himself, mostly, except for the parts that are off. Deader, too, but generally just looking like Sam, on first glance. That’s okay. Sam can fight that.

“Not gonna happen,” he says calmly. It’s in his face, as if it wants to bite or kiss, and it has no smell. It’s unsettling, somehow. Sam can see it, hear it, feel it but the lack of smell gives the impression that doesn’t really exist.

He probably shouldn’t talk to it. He shouldn’t acknowledge its presence, but it’s undeniably there.

 _It will,_ it says. _We will._

“Not tonight.”

 _Because you’ll stop me? Because you and your brother are going to stop us? You think I’m too weak but I wouldn’t come if I was and I’m here._

“You’re here because my blood forces you.” Sam lifts his arms, shows the symbols he cut into his own flesh. Powerful magic; demonic in nature, but that’s what works best with his blood. “Walk away from here, then I will believe you if you say how powerful you are.”

 _Wrong, wrong again. I’d have been too weak, perhaps. But you force me, offer your blood. You walk towards me and I meet you in the middle._

Sam doesn’t say anything, so the thing says, _Walked into your own trap, Sammy. All along. You all did. Jerry did, and then I ate him._

Jerry wasn’t eaten (not physically), but that’s not what prompts Sam to speak. “What do you mean, Jerry walked into your trap?”

 _Jerry was a tool. A tool and a fool and a meal for the moment. We planned and he thought it was him. Needed me to get out, us. Get to you. All because of you, Sammy._

It’s not lying – Sam knows it, the way he just knows things sometimes. “Why me?” he whispers, though he knows the answer. Even Bobby knows it, proved that in his final call to Dean – the one Dean didn’t tell Sam about and didn’t have to.

 _Raw potential,_ the thing offers. _Destiny, if you will. Lucifer was a limitation; he only wanted you to be him. You can be so much. You can be everything._

“Then how about letting me choose what to be?”

 _You will choose this. To lead us. We’re all following already._

And all of a sudden – or maybe it’s been buildings slowly or there all along – Sam can feel it, the power inside him. The power to do anything he wants. The power that’s in him, that _is_ him, there and around, like a tide rushing against him. He could explode the tree over there, or send this thing back to where it came from, and all he’ll have to do is do it.

This power has waited to destroy him all his life. No one could use it without losing themselves. Sam can see himself use it – for good ends, justified – and how it corrupts him, twists his mind before tearing him apart. He can see himself drown just looking at it. It’s not meant for him, he’s meant for it.

Once will be enough.

His throat is tight as he whispers, “Follow me where?”

 _To hell._

A new noise. Footsteps, or something like it. Sam takes his eyes off the creature, looks around, but the bright moonlight is blinding where it hits the dying trees, hiding the shadows better than an overcast sky would have. It might be Dean. Maybe it is Dean and this will be over soon.

The light and the shadows are dancing around Sam. (Maybe he cut too deep.)

 _It’ll be over soon,_ the thing says, as if reading Sam’s mind. (It probably is.) _You’ll be over soon. It’s either this or madness. Infinite power or insanity. Existence without pain or be your brother’s burden until he finds the courage to kill you. This is your way out._

Sam must be losing too much blood – there is a tightness in his chest that makes it hard to breathe, like a cold, dead hand wrapped around his heart and squeezing. Like the creature’s hand is wrapped around his arm, the cold touch burning his skin like hellfire. Burning his soul, perhaps. Sam wants, needs to get away, but wherever he moves, the thing is always with him.

It can’t leave. He called it in the first place, and this is part of the plan. He has to remind himself that this is part of the plan and a good thing because it means the plan is working.

The thing is bound to him, but he’s also bound to it.

But not much longer. This is necessary to get rid of it forever, and Sam has been in this place so often. Did what was necessary to defeat a fiend even if it was unpleasant, so he doesn’t know why this gets to him so much he wants to scream or cry. Run, mostly. He doesn’t. It’s right behind him anyway.

But that’s the point. They’re bound to each other, but he’s the one deciding where they are going. For now. (The thing’s power is choking him. It’s not enough to break his own power that surrounds him like a wall ready to eat him, but they are beginning to mingle, and then it will creep inside him…)

It snickers. _You think you are in control of your actions. You’re not._

(Or maybe it already has.)

A twig breaks behind them. Not close, but he turns anyway, sees (the shadow of something that looks like Dean and turns out to be) Dean step into the light. He’s holding the doll in his hand, the stuffed toy hanging limp and heavy, defenceless and deceivingly harmless.

He manages to hold on to it when suddenly he’s flying through the forest, lifted up and then thrown by an invisible force. Sam’s brother lets out a startled yell, but he’s silent as he hits branches that break under the impact and finally the ground. Dead leaves settle around him.

There’s a groan of pain. Sam yells Dean’s name and starts running. The thing stays with him. It doesn’t move but it’s always there. With every step, Sam is taking it closer to his brother, who’s hurt and defenceless.

Maybe he’s dying? Oh God, what if he’s dying? This was Sam’s plan, and of course it’s going wrong. This wasn’t meant to happen.

But the hole in the ground is still there. It’s right between them, where it should be.

So Sam stops, just for a second; a second is long enough for the nameless thing to be there and whisper, _You can’t save him like this._ And for Sam to push down his fear with lifelong practice to wrap his arms around it and send them both tumbling down.

The light of the full moon makes the hole a deep black pit, and a part of Sam seems to stay up there, frozen in fear, while another part of him falls far, far deeper than the rest.

What remains is torn apart upon impact. The hole is barely twelve feet deep and the ground covered in straw, but it’s still hard and painful, jarring his whole body. Sam hardly feels it. It’s his soul that breaks when he hits the ground, and something is moving in through the cracks.

After a long time that might have been only seconds, he becomes aware of the weight lying on him. The thing has landed on top of him, or perhaps it crawled there. It’s pinning him down, breathing in his face. _Not so great a plan, Sammy,_ it says. _Too much of a risk of it backfiring. Did you really think you’d get lucky twice?_

It doesn’t sound so evil now. Almost gentle. Of course. This is working to its advantage. It’s been spared all of one or two days of waiting.

But.

But Sam’s been here before, and compared to the devil, this one is pathetic. It’s already inside the trap, and no matter what it says, it wouldn’t be here is Sam hadn’t forced it. The only open question is whether Sam will be trapped (again) here too, or not.

He tells himself that, but his own voice is nearly swallowed by the knowledge that this time what he’s trying to fight here is just him. The thing is right. This isn’t about being turned into anything, this is just about being what he is anyway.

Does he really want to fight this? Doesn’t he finally want to be himself and stop the struggle that has been going on all his life? If he’s honest, he’s only fighting out of habit, just like his soulless self protected Dean out of habit, without any real reason or desire. And it’s not like anything good will come out of it – all he’ll get as a prize is suffering and insanity. There’s no point.

Sam coughs and gets to his feet, the thing shoved aside with ease. His fingers slide over the wall, find what they are looking for stuck in the hard earth and pull it free. “Dean,” he calls. “Dean, can you hear me?”

No answer. The worry that runs through Sam easily drowns out any temptation and doubt that is being whispered into his mind. He’s been making this choice every day of his life, ever since he learned what he could do and be and chose not to.

Being reminded of it doesn’t make it any harder.

Not when Dean needs him. And to help Dean, Sam needs to get this thing off him.

“Dean!” Sam calls again, louder this time, and with a hint of desperation. There is a groan up there, the kind of noise Dean makes when he wakes with a hangover. At least he’s alive. That’s the most important thing. Maybe he’s even well enough to make it back to town on his own, because if he’s too badly hurt to play his part, Sam won’t be able to help him.

“Coming, Sammy,” Dean calls back, sounding shaky.

 _He’s not going to get you._

“You could have killed us all the time;” Sam says. He doesn’t want to talk to it but has to keeps its attention from Dean. “Why didn’t you? You could have freed yourself by getting rid of me.” If the thing could throw books and steal weapons and reflections, it could easily have pushed them down the stairs.

 _Told you. This isn’t about being free. This is about you._

“And Dean? He must have been in your way. Wouldn’t it have been easier without him?”

 _You love him. So do we._

“Then why throw him around now? You could have killed him!”

 _Knew what I was doing. But we’ll break his legs to keep him from becoming a bother. If you still love him later, you can heal him. He can wait here with us._

The creature lifts its hand in a symbolic representation of its intention, pointing to where Sam doesn’t have to look to know Dean can be seen at the edge of the hole, a dark outline before the night sky. It can’t be four AM yet.

A strange moment to wonder about the time, Sam thinks as nothing at all happens.

“Sorry about that. Looks like these actually do work on you.” Sam moves his foot to scratch away the straw on the ground and reveal the symbols painted on the stone beneath it. “You’re done here. Go home.”

 _Doesn’t matter. We’ll go home together. Still bound, child. Remember._

It grabs Sam’s throat, suddenly, squeezes and leans in, very, very close. It doesn’t squeeze enough to cut off his air completely, but Sam suddenly wonders what will happen if it does kill him, here and now. Where they’d go.

He doesn’t intend to find out.

“Sam!” Dean calls above him, voice stronger now. “Hurry up!”

Something falls into the hole, hits the wall of earth and stone behind Sam. With effort, Sam pushes the creature off him. Earlier, it wasn’t this hard.

He lifts the knife he pulled out off the earth after the fall.

 _That won’t protect you,_ the creature says, somewhere between sneer and pity.

“We’ll see,” Sam hisses between clenched teeth, before he sets the blade to his own skin and slashes it through the symbols carved into his flesh, breaking their magic.

The expected reaction of the creature doesn’t come. It just looks at him with something Sam would call sadness had it not been wearing his own face, and watches as he reaches for the rope Dean threw down.

Only when Sam turns away to climb up it grabs him again, but it doesn’t try to stop him. It just leans closer, so it can whisper and only Sam can hear.

 _It’s not over for you. Just know we will come if you call us._

And even closer, even quieter, _This was not an attack, it was an offer for help. And you’ll take it. Because, those things you have been seeing, hearing lately? That wasn’t all me._

Sam remembers the attack in the motel bathroom. It was so strong then, without any additional bindings. So even with the sigils broken, it could hold him back if it wanted to. The rope is drenched in holy water and has iron and silver woven into it, but so far nothing worked on this one. It could keep him here.

But it only lets him go.

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

Dean is pretty sure that he didn’t break anything, but he still bumped his ribs quite good, and everything hurts as he uses all his strength to pull his brother out of that hole. Despite all the weight Sam lost, he’s still a grown man, but Dean would pull him out of the deepest pit of hell if he had to. (Except he didn’t.)

Fortunately, Sam is helping. Dean could probably let him climb out on his own, but it’s not like Sam is in top condition – and seeing that thing stand so close, leaning in to whisper in Sam’s ear, he has to get him out of there as soon as possible.

People have whispered all kinds of shit in Sammy’s ear far too often. (And in Dean’s. A part of him will never forgive his father for giving him that burden.)

Dean’s head hurts, but that’s tolerable. Almost done, with pulling Sam up and everything else. And considering he got thrown through half a forest tonight, he got off pretty well.

Maybe that thing actually spoke the truth when it said it didn’t want to hurt him (because Sammy loves him). Somehow, that almost makes him wish it had.

It also makes him consider himself lucky it was already down in the hole when it decided to break his legs.

Dean’s quite happy Sam managed to find this area through his online search; with not too many threes, no one around and many holes in the ground – because three hours would never have been enough time to dig a hole of at least ten feet.

They were lucky to find this one, though Dean wishes it wasn’t quite as deep. Even with three layers of straw on the bottom, that fall must have hurt.

Still, Sam holds on to the rope and walks up the wall quickly enough. He must be as eager to get away from that creature as Dean is to get him away from it.

The moment Sam crawls over the edge, Dean lets go of the rope and runs over to pull him up. Sam is trembling with exhaustion and sags against him immediately, which is when Dean notices how cold and clammy his skin is, and how pale his face.

“Damn it,” he curses, taking hold of Sam’s bloody hands. “Fuck you, Sam. Did you have to cut so deep?”

He takes off his jacket, tears stripes out of his shirt and wraps them tightly around Sam’s arms. Then he wraps the jacket around Sam’s shoulders because he’s half-naked and bleeding in the chilly night air, and having him die of pneumonia he caught while saving himself from an evil spirit would kind of suck.

“Dean, we don’t have time for this,” Sam says, because he’s a little bitch.

“No point in saving you if you die from it,” Dean points out, hoping Sam will kindly not point out that with the threat of something evil taking over his not inconsiderable powers, this wasn’t just about saving _him_. Also, for Dean it pretty much was.

Sam doesn’t, which Dean appreciates. “Let’s get this over with,” he says, and hands Sam the doll. It’s heavy and lifeless. Completely harmless. Dean feels better the moment it’s gone from his hands.

He dropped his duffle somewhere nearby. Dean runs to get Sam the things he needs, and then he sits near the edge of the hole and looks down at the enemy, to see if it’ll try anything while Sam performs the exorcism on the doll that will sever this thing’s connection to this world. But it doesn’t. It just stares back at him, without moving. Its eyes are hidden in shadow.

Dean wishes it wouldn’t look like Sam.

He wishes it even more when it goes up in flames, without a word or struggle, as the doll burns.


	9. Epilogue

Dean doesn’t kiss Sam when it’s over. There are a few opportunities where a kiss would have been appropriate, but the time/place thing gets in the way every time. When Sam got out of the hole would have been a fantastic moment, but at that point, his little brother was shaking and bleeding and they frankly had more urgent concerns. Then, after the doll and the spirit/creature/thing were gone and it was all over, and the sky was beginning to show the first signs of beginning dawn, Dean should have swept his brother off the ground in a grand gesture of relief and kissed the living daylights out of him. Unfortunately, seeing something that looked like Sam burn in a hole in the ground was a surprisingly effective killer for his libido and his sense of romance.

It just continues after that. They get back to the motel, where an exploded kitchen is still waiting for them, and decide to pack up and leave right after Dean properly took care of Sam’s cuts and Sam checked Dean’s head and torso. A phone call to Bobby is made to let him know they are still alive, then they hit the road and drive towards the rising sun. Dean could have leaned over and placed a kiss on Sam’s lips then, but by the time he gets that idea, Sam is slumped against the window and lost in la-la land. So much for that.

They stop at a diner around noon. Sam eats, drinks and uses the bathroom, which in itself kind of makes Dean want to kiss him, since it limits the risk of Sam dying of exploded kidneys at an inconvenient moment. But there are a lot of people around, and that Dean has accepted the fact that he’d like to do things to another guy who happens to be his brother (or rather, his brother who happens to be another guy) doesn’t mean he’s quite ready to do it in public.

Also, Sam might have hacked off his balls with the fork. He’s crafty like that.

At sunset they turn in at another motel. This one is a little better than the ones they usually prefer, but they did good work, Dean is in high spirits and they must have saved hundreds of dollars through Sam’s eating habits anyway.

Dean decides to work on that next. Can’t have his brother starve on him. And he has no illusions that Sam will miraculously be all okay now, gain fifty pounds in two weeks and stop having nightmares. Things are still looking good, though, and they’ll continue getting better.

Their room is a good start. It’s clean, nice looking, and has one king instead of two queens. Dean might have accidentally done that on purpose. He spontaneously decides that they deserve a vacation and can stay two nights. Or three. The TV looks awesome, too.

Sam sits on the edge of the bed that seems to be horribly comfortable and looks at Dean with a mix of uncertainty and expectation that makes Dean’s body move without asking him first. With two long strides he’s standing in front of Sam and taking his face in his hands, and then he’s kissing him.

It’s not the wild, passionate kiss he expected. It starts almost chaste until Sam returns it and his hands come to rest on Dean’s hips. Dean trails his tongue along Sam’s lips then, before sliding between them, and Sam pulls him closer, and then he falls backwards onto the bed, pulling Dean on top of him.

After that, when hands find their way under clothes and trail over new and old injuries, bruises on one man and protruding ribs on the other, when Sam leans into his touch and arches beneath him and makes those quiet, helpless gasps, Dean can’t help but wonder how long it’s been for his brother.

Hell, it has been long enough for Dean. And he doesn’t see a reason to hold back anymore.

Pushing Sam down, his hand finds the fly of Sam’s pants and guide Sam’s searching hands to his own. Dean is as careful as he has to be with all the pains and aches Sam must still be suffering from, and as passionate as he wants to be while being exactly where he should be. And it’s perfect, until he realises that Sam’s hands on his shoulders aren’t caressing but pushing, and Sam isn’t just gasping his name but saying “Dean, Dean, wait,” as he looks at him through wide, wide eyes full of confusion and fear.

Dean wants to ask what’s wrong, but he can’t bring himself to speak. Worry, confusion, and dread render him silent.

“Dean, did…” Sam stops, looks at Dean with something akin to panic. “Did we do this before? Did we… We did, didn’t we?”

“What? No!” Dean leans back, then reaches out to cradle Sam’s face between his hands. “Of course not. What makes you say that?” What kind of question was that?

With any other person, Dean would have thought they were pulling his leg, would have gotten mad at them for killing the mood. But Sam’s eyes fill with tears and Dean can only speculate on what prompted this question. What kind of nightmares that fucking spirit must have filled his brother’s restless nights with.

Dean pulls Sam up and holds him close, suddenly only the big brother again. Sam’s breathing speeds up as realisation is catching up with him while he tries to separate fact from illusion and reality slips away from him. “Shh,” Dean whispers, stroking his hair. “It’s okay, Sammy. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got you, it’s over...”

 

 

*-*-*-*

 

 

The hand in his hair never stills. Sam feels like they’ve been sitting here forever, like his body has gone numb along with his mind, but Dean is still stroking his hair, and his heart is still beating strongly and evenly in his chest. Sam can hear it. This is real. (Isn’t it?)

“You’re going to be fine,” Dean whispers over and over again. He brushes the hair out of Sam’s face (always there, always, always there for him) and presses a kiss to his forehead. “You’re going to be fine. You’ll see. This is just the aftershock. You’re going to be fine.”

A magic formula to defeat the darkness. It will come true if repeated often enough. Dean believes it and that will be enough. They can’t all be wrong, Sam thinks as he slowly allows himself to relax into his brother’s arms. The other Dean, the one who is just a shadow in the doorway, nods slowly as if to agree.

 

 

-* End *-

 

May 1, 2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hitori Kakurenbo ritual exists. I am by no means an expert on it and I have never tried it myself. All I know about it comes from various online blogs and I used what information I have on it somewhat loosely.
> 
> If you want to know more about it, google “one man hide-and-seek” or go [here](http://sayainunderworld.blogspot.com/2008/09/one-man-hide-and-seek.html) for the article that first made me think “This would be a cool idea for a story!”


End file.
